In their shimmering, otherworldly debut, Sabrina Imbler profiles ten of the ocean's strangest creatures, drawing astonishing connections between their lives and ours and illuminating wondrous models of survival, adaptation, identity, sex, and care on our faltering planet. A queer, mixed-race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature, including: the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her eggs, the Chinese sturgeon whose migration route has been decimated by pollution and dams, the bizarre, predatory Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena), and other uncanny creatures lurking in the deep ocean. Imbler discovers that some of the most radical models of family, community, and care can be found in the sea, from gelatinous chains that are both individual organisms and colonies of clones to deep-sea crabs that have no need for the sun, nourished instead by the chemicals and heat throbbing from the core of the Earth. Weaving the miraculous wonders of marine biology with stories of Imbler's own family, relationships, and coming of age, How Far the Light Reaches invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live.

If you flush a goldfish --My mother and the starving octopus -- My grandmother and the sturgeon -- How to draw a sperm whale -- Pure life -- Beware the sand striker -- Hybrids -- We swarm -- Morphing like a cuttlefish -- Us everlasting