Sami Bayly loves the weird and wonderful.
The ocean, then, was the perfect place for her latest illustrated book, How We Came to Be: Surprising Sea Creatures.
The book, released yesterday, combines evolution stories with Sami's illustrations of the creatures and, indeed, herself.
"I can confidently say that I hate drawing people, which is why I stick with animals. The most painful part of the whole book was drawing myself," said Sami, of East Maitland.
The natural history illustrator used photos of herself pulling faces to help draw her own image in a yellow diving suit.
"They [the photos] will not be seeing the light of day," she quipped.
Just like some of the ocean zones described in the book that exist in darkness.
The various zones are: sunlight (surface to 200 metres below), twilight (200-1000 metres below), midnight (1000-4000 metres below), the abyss (4000-6000 metres below) and the trenches (6000-11,000 metres below).
She describes creatures from the various zones, some of which seem "otherworldly".
In the midnight zone, the "grandpa Greenland shark" is described as "one of the oldest and slowest sharks in the world". It lives from 250 to 500 years old and can withstand temperatures below freezing.
"They're very elusive," Sami said.
The abyss zone covers about 83 per cent of the ocean and 60 per cent of the Earth's surface. One strange creature that lives there is the tripod spiderfish. The blind creature sits on its "tripod fins".
"It's so sweet but so freaky. It just sits there blind with its mouth open, waiting for food to land in its mouth," she said.
The fins have grown longer over millions of years and work like a tripod, fixing the creature to the ocean floor.
"They feel this tiny movement of water around them, if there's something coming past," Sami said.
"They know purely by that movement whether it's prey they can eat - something small. Or, if it's a predator that's coming to eat them and maybe they need to try and escape. Just how far they've come and what they can do without sight is incredible."
Sami believes the ocean is ideal for educating children about evolution.
"The ocean is a great place to start. Life started in the ocean," she said.
She said the ocean had "so many different kinds of creatures that look so weird and have such interesting stories".
She literally takes "a deep dive" into the story of evolution, with a focus on how sea creatures have evolved to survive.
Sami sees beauty and importance in all animals, regardless of their appearance and aims to share that appreciation. She previously published a trilogy of illustrated encyclopedias on ugly and dangerous animals and peculiar pairs in nature.
She will host the launch of her new book on Tuesday, October 18 at Harry Hartog Bookseller at Westfield Kotara. The book is published by Hachette Australia.
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