Anthology comes from Greek words meaning "to gather
flowers." In this collection of underwater stories, we
have harvested from among those who explore the depths of
the ocean realm, choosing extraordinarily well crafted
professional sequences and placing them alongside more
roughly made footage by dedicated amateurs. Our goal has
been to assemble an anthology that shows the splendid
diversity of life and behavior hidden beneath the waves,
but also to create a dive album that showcases the
extended family of scuba divers that has grown up since
the invention of the aqualung six decades ago.
We
hope that Sensational Seas will
evoke
the thrills of diving − those priceless moments when you
want to yell WOW into your regulator and you seem to have
merged with the sea. John Steinbeck, in his book The Sea
of Cortez, provides to my mind all the rationale we need
for taking time out from our demanding routines to explore
this new world: "...we simply liked it. We liked it very
much.... the gardens of the sea, and the beer and the
work, they were all one thing and we were that one thing
too."
In
some of the most fascinating footage in Sensational Seas,
the ocean opens up and speaks and acts with its own
multitude of voices and dramas: we hear the songs of
humpback whales, feel the fear prey does for predator, see
through the eyes of a bird as it hunts beneath the waves.
Such sensational achievements in video are rare and worth
celebrating, perhaps ultimately because they transform our
earth-anchored state of mind, remove us from daily cares,
and make us affirm that we like diving, we like it very
much.
~ William Warmus
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