Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence

The dazzling flow of life beneath the sea fills these pages with facts as intriguing as any fiction, as famed explorer Jacque-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997) recounts his expeditions across the waterways of the world in search of the elusive truths about the escape artists of the deep. Captain Cousteau's acquaintance with octopus and squid extends over decades, and his experience taught him that, far from the nightmarish monster of legend, these fascinating creatures are shy, playful, and highly intelligent - and if anything, a friend to man. In an absorbing narrative and 124 full-color photographs, he describes encounters with the "soft intelligence" in a bay off a small island with an octopus under every rock, on an archaeological dig in the Mediterranean where whole colonies turned up ensconced in ancient Greek amphorae, and off the coast of Seattle where giants reaching thirty feet in length dwell. Cousteau also has much to report on his experiences with squid, most memorably a ight in the Pacific when he and his team found their ship Calypso in the middle of a great mating ritual of thousands of the swarming organisms. In addition there are chapters on the sensory apparatus of octopus and squid and their extraordinary arts of camouflage, as well as on those strange cousins of the family, the nautilus and the argonauts. Philippe Victor Diolé (1908 - 1977) was a French author and undersea explorer. With Jacques-Yves Cousteau he co-authored 7 of the 8-volume series The Undersea Discoveries of Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1970-1975) and co-authored The Whale (1987), which was released posthumously.