Roberts’s memoir is a rich and loving ode to the sea, to coral reefs and to science itself.

Reef Life is a vibrant memoir of the joys, as well as the grind, of a research career beginning in the 1980s that has spanned a golden age of coral reef science. It is also a fine introduction to the ecology of reefs and the existential threats they now face.

... it is the many passages that celebrate the profound beauty and biodiversity of coral reefs that make the most compelling argument for change.

Reef Life is a richly impressionistic personal tour of the coral reef world before it’s gone forever.

The book succeeds as both a memoir of a scientist's research career and passions and an accessible narrative of the science of coral reefs, making its appeal for a broad audience. Roberts also deftly addresses the decline of coral reefs, persisting threats, and complexities of conservation.

Roberts conveys the majesty of the underwater world, and the often rough conditions for setting up research stations on inhospitable shores. In enthusiastic prose he describes corals, the fish, and other animals that live amongst the coral colonies, and the dangers these fragile worlds face in an age of global climate change. Spectacular color and black-and-white photographs entice us into a world most of us will never see but will grow to care about..

... a blend of polemic and memoir.

... a vital account ...Throughout, Roberts shows a gift for vivid descriptions of the creatures he encounters.