Photos freeze icy fantastic life-forms

LIFE UNDER ICE, by Mary M. Cerullo, photos by Bill Curtsinger; Tilbury House, Gardiner, Maine, 2003, $16.95.

Whales, seals and gigantic starfish and hundreds of penguins – how can you go wrong?

“Life Under Ice,” a new children’s book created by Yarmouth underwater photographer Bill Curtsinger, provides all of this and more as it explores the ice-topped greenhouse that is the Antarctic Ocean.

The world he explores is fascinating, with ghostly white ice fish that survive because of the natural antifreeze running through their veins, and sponges large enough for a man to crawl into.

Curtsinger’s photographs beneath the ice reveal a shadowy blue world that looks more like deep space than anything else on the face of the Earth.

The diversity of animals in such a harsh environment is amazing. Red starfish the size of a tire, and bright orange sea spiders the size of a dinner plate seem like they belong in a tropical reef rather than this world of white.

The photographs are nice, especially considering they were taken in almost total darkness, submerged in water as cold as 29 degrees Fahrenheit, but there are too many tiny images. A few outstanding photographs, run large enough to appreciate, would make a bigger impact.

The few full-page images in the book – a collage that overlays a photograph of krill beneath the surface with a whale feeding above, and a silhouetted diver rising from black water to a sliver of blue sky – are breathtaking.

And you can’t help but smile when you open to the center of the book, with facing pages showing a crowd of penguins flashing their black backs, then their white bellies to the camera.

South Portland writer Mary Cerullo includes enough trivia to keep children interested in the detailed story of explorers diving in Antarctica.

For instance, just try to forget this little factoid: If the ice in Antarctica’s miles-thick glaciers were broken up, it would supply every person on Earth with an ice cube as large as a Great Pyramid.

But the vocabulary and the science in this book are challenging, even for experienced readers. In fact, Cerullo’s scientific explanations of global warming and how salt keeps the frigid ocean from freezing would be informative for most moms and dads.