Science Magazine

One afternoon in the late 1970s, deep in the labyrinthine interior of a massive Gothic tower in New Haven, an unsuspecting employee of Yale University opened a long-locked room in the Payne Whitney Gymnasium and stumbled upon something shocking and disturbing. Shocking, because what he found was an enormous cache of nude photographs, thousands and thousands of photographs of young men in front, side, and rear poses. Disturbing, because the photos looked like the record of a bizarre body-piercing ritual.

Welcome to Ultramarine, which takes a deep dive into the science seeking to understand and protect our precious aquatic world. As anyone who’s rolled out of a boat in diving or snorkeling gear into deep water knows, there’s nothing as thrilling as entering the ocean and peering inside it.

For 20 long unholy years, Hurtz, the pilot, dreamed of retirement...and found his "acre of heaven" on a death star. Hurtz went through the automatic motions of preparing himself for their landing on the small unnamed planet, but each thing he did was a wasted motion because it was really the boy, Jones, who was going to put the rocket down. And, what could Hurtz do now? The hard, aging muscles of his body were taut, and although the lines about his eyes had deepened, his eyes - blue and sparkling - still retained their old ferocity.