Claude Monniot is a professor at the Museum national d'histoire naturelle of Paris.
Françoise Monniot is a director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.
Specialists on ascidians, they have collected and studied worldwide specimens, using diving techniques but also aboard ships at all latitudes, and down to the deepest bottoms.
Pierre Laboute is a scientific diver at Orstom and one of the best photographs of Pacific animals. He has largely contributed to the collection of underwater photographs of animals in the New Caledonian lagoon.
These authors have succeeded in producing an artistic volume on an exciting new subject, recommended to satisfy the curiosity of the general public as well as to teach marine biology to students and scuba divers, in a field which has never been previously popularized.