Book Review: How Far the Light Reaches: A Life In Ten Sea Creatures

Left: author Sabrina Imbler; Right: cover art for How Far the Light Reaches

What do we know about life in the ocean, and what can the varied forms of life there teach us about our own lives and selves? These are the questions Sabrina Imbler (they/them), a writer and science journalist living in Brooklyn, New York, artfully, playfully, and joyfully explores in How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures.

If this collection of memoirist essays sets out to explore “a life in ten sea creatures,” one of the questions it raises is: whose life is being explored? After reading the first several essays in the collection, I expected that the book would be about Imbler’s life, or their mother’s, or maybe even their grandmother’s—but by its completion, How Far the Light Reaches becomes about all of these lives and many more: the lives of the queer community and of mixed-race and immigrant communities in the US; the lives of Imbler’s lovers and friends and acquaintances; the lives of those who gather at transient nightclubs and at the queer end of Brooklyn’s Riis Beach. It is also about the life of the cuttlefish, the sturgeon, the giant Pacific octopus, and the thousands of creatures that sustain themselves through a whale fall. It is about the life of the ocean itself, even in those darkest of places where light cannot reach, but where nonetheless—miraculously and against all odds—life still thrives.

A whale shark swims in the ocean with light rays shining down on it. The title of Imbler’s book refers to the three vertical zones of the ocean, which are categorized according to how far light reaches: in the aphotic (or midnight) zone, where no light reaches, life exists in perpetual darkness.

The form of this book mirrors its content as the narrative switches seamlessly between scientific and humanistic writing, with Imbler interweaving fascinating facts and anecdotes about deep sea creatures with vignettes from their own personal life and the lives of their loved ones. While critics might be justified in saying that Imbler’s comparisons can, at times, feel forced, with their descriptions of ocean creatures and their behaviors occasionally bordering on the anthropomorphic, Imbler’s writing succeeds because it is less focused on strict scientific reportage and more invested in humanistic inquiry about the connections—both literal and metaphorical—between deep sea creatures and the humans who walk on land above them. Their creative intermixing of science writing and memoir calls to mind books like Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments and Sy Montgomery’s How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals. What makes Imbler’s book stand out from other “eco-memoirs,” however, is their commitment to using animal stories to explore not just themselves or the human species en masse, but those among us who are most marginalized and vulnerable, and whose survival is most at risk—people of color; immigrant communities; and the LGBTQIA community.

In the essay “Us Everlasting,” Imbler explores what humans might learn from the “ontogeny reversal” of Turritopsis dohrnii, commonly known as the immortal jellyfish (pictured above)

Engaging these themes of marginality, struggle, and survival, essays in the collection thoughtfully and accessibly describe the ways in which sea creatures adapt, survive, and thrive: the remarkable ways feral goldfish grow and evolve when they live outside bowls and fish tanks; the resilience and tenacity required of the mother octopus with the longest brooding period on record (four and a half years!); and the incredible variety of life that can be sustained through death when the carcass of a dead whale comes to rest on the ocean’s floor. As they explore the creatures of the ocean deep, Imbler connects animals’ experiences, behaviors, and survival mechanisms to their own experiences as a member of queer, nonbinary, and mixed-race communities. Through unexpected juxtapositions involving stories of sperm whales and blue whales, octopuses and cuttlefish, sand strikers and salps, immortal jellyfish and feral goldfish, Imbler shows the similarities between human experiences and the experiences of non-human animals, particularly the cunning, surprising, and inspiring ways that varied species fight for their survival. The resulting collection is a thoughtful, refreshing exploration of the ways in which creatures of the deep sea might offer humans models and aspirations for living differently—and for living better.

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