WORLD DOG SURFING GIFT GUIDE

If you enjoyed the Megalodon-sized thrills in bestselling author Steve Alten’s The MEG (which Warner Brothers turned into a blockbuster movie), imagine becoming part of the action yourself. Sea Monster Cove immerses visitors in an interactive multimedia experience where prehistoric sharks and other massive sea creatures are anything but ancient history.

Steve Alten, author of the NY Times bestselling MEG series, has created a world like no other. He says that Sea Monster Cove is a revolutionary multimedia entertainment concept that combines virtual reality, a web TV series, a video game and learning platform into one interactive site.

The Sea Monster Cove website of Alten’s imagination is a spectacular, five-star aquarium-themed resort located on Maug, a remote (and very real) island in the Western Pacific. Maug‘s volcano erupted 5 million years ago; today all that remains are three uninhabited islets that had been the volcano’s rim and a flooded magma chamber that serves as its lagoon.

Why place a virtual island resort here? That’s where Alten’s research and storytelling takes over. Eight years ago, a French marine biologist, Dr. Maxime Rostand discovered superheated mineral water rising up through Maug’s lagoon. Through a series of events, including an emergency C-section which saved two pups of a deceased pregnant prehistoric Mako shark, Rostand discovers the source of the hot mineral water to be a primordial aquifer located 2 miles beneath the sea floor — its inhabitants dating back 380 million years.

Having established the backstory about how these terrifying creatures managed to escape extinction (the “home videos” of the two surviving pups growing up is MUST-SEE), it’s time to meet and interact with the critters. Imagine the greatest aquarium-themed park ever conceived, holding the most terrifying prehistoric sharks and sea monsters that ever lived. It’s not hard to do.

At Sea Monster Cove, the special effects are motion picture-worthy, and the wildlife doesn’t just swim around in benign circles; in fact, they seem quite aware that you are watching them, and they clearly do not like it, especially when you enter their domain to do a little “cage diving.” In each of these heart-pounding, 360-degree experiences, the user controls the viewing angle, attempting to track the attacks as they happen (there are day and night versions available). The action is nonstop and the creatures so real that it is easy to lose yourself in a two-hour reprieve from reality.

The adventure is retold and advanced in Alten’s original episodic web TV series, Where Sea Monsters Roam (available to website members). Most unique: what happens in the series also happens during your aquarium visits. As an example, if Snowflake, the park’s 63-foot, 25-ton prehistoric albino Mako drags a crane into her tank in the opening episode, don’t be surprised to see it lying on the bottom on your next visit!

In addition to visiting the sharks and sea monsters, members will soon be able to experience what it’s like to venture into the prehistoric aquifer in a hunter sub and capture them in a Sea Monsters Roam video game. There’s also an education center, and a private library offering enhanced versions of Alten’s novels as well as teacher curriculum materials for distance learning.

One of the most popular features may just turn out to be CELEBRITY CAMEOS — the first one featuring James “Murr” Murray, one of the stars of TV’s Impractical Jokers. Murr, whose new novel, DON’T MOVE (Blackstone Publishing, co-written by Darren Wearmouth) debuts October 20, claims he and his bride, Melyssa stopped by Maug Island on their way home from their honeymoon to visit Sea Monster Cove when things “got out of hand.”

On another note, the MEG sequel, MEG-2: The TRENCH, is in pre-production, as is The LOCH (a thriller about the Loch Ness Monster) along with one other underwater feature, which cannot be announced just yet (but the enhanced version of the novel is available in the website’s private library). Steve Alten is also the founder and director of the nonprofit Adopt-an-Author teen reading program, considered by many educators to be the most effective tool to get reluctant readers to read.

For more information, visit www.seamonstercove.com