OUR BLUE PLANET

A tour of our planet’s largest habitat (by far), with glimpses of prominent residents.

Sandwiched between statements from David Attenborough and couched throughout in the same distinctly avuncular tones, this offshoot from a BBC nature documentary series offers both the requisite messages about plastics pollution and care for our environment and a set of undersea scenes with brief but lively captions, from the “delicate underwater ballet” of a kelp forest to a battery of bluntnose sixgill sharks chowing down on a dead whale “like hungry teenagers arriving for dinner.” In mixes of vignettes and larger seascapes, Dove ably evokes the beauty of the series’ digitally enhanced video work, if not its grandeur, with painted galleries of gracefully posed, accurately detailed flora and (more often) fauna from tiny plankton to walruses, whales, siphonophores (“giant trailing death nets”), and like “bruisers and cruisers” in coastal rockpools on down to deepest depths. It’s a tempting invitation to dive in—notwithstanding one startling aerial view of a stylized Palm Beach with swarms of sharks lurking just offshore. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A refreshing dip thanks to lively imagery in both art and narrative.