To unplumbed depths,

Over 30 years ago, the husband and wife team of Hans and Lotte Hass burst onto television screens with some incredible underwater adventures and they soon became household names. Their programmes were as equally exciting as those from the great Jacques Cousteau and provided us with much entertainment. It was from those programmes that the world's viewing public began to learn something about the underwater environment for the very first time. Then Hass stopped diving and went to work in the field of behavioural and evolutionary theory. Until a few years ago he was still being invited to address diving audiences in the UK but, sadly, apart from frequent jibes aimed directly at Cousteau, the subject matter had nothing whatsoever to do with diving. Nevertheless, Hans Hass had already earned his place in scuba diving's own hall of fame. In this book (first published in 1972) Hass recounts a number of adventures around the world. Commencing with a curious chapter on spear-fishing - which seems to go right against his own principles!, he then proceeds to cover such subjects as; Coral & sharks, the Red Sea, film-making, Great Barrier Reef, Sperm Whales and The Maldives with a final and curious collection of stories at the end. This is not a classic like Cousteau's "Silent World" and, viewed today - over 30 years on, suffers greatly from never having been revised or up-dated. Nevertheless, one should still view the work as part of the rich heritage of scuba diving - if only because there was a time when Hans Hass was a great diving pioneer and, along with his wife Lotte, a household name. NM