The failing of the book lies not in a lack of attention to scientific

Interesting question! You have a valid point -- "whose" isn't fundamentally wrong in (C). But (C) has a bigger issue. Because the final modifier is set off by a comma, it seems to be incidental, or nonessential, information. To see why this is a problem, consider an example:

Tim was furious that his daughter read a book, which was filled with scenes of gratuitous unicorn violence.

In this case, the "which" modifier describes the "book." That part is okay. But the fact that it follows a comma makes it seem unimportant, thrown in to give a little additional texture about what Tim's daughter was reading.

But that doesn't make much sense. The main clause would then be "Tim was furious that his daughter read a book." This makes it sound as though he's mad that his daughter is reading. Dad, for all of his many flaws, is probably not opposed to child literacy. A more logical interpretation is that Tim is mad about the kind of book his daughter is reading, making the modifier too important to treat as incidental.

A better way to capture this notion would be to write: "Tim was furious that his daughter read a book with scenes of gratuitous unicorn violence."

Now it's clear: the issue isn't that she's reading. The issue is what she's reading.

There's a similar split between (C) and (A). In (C), the "whose" modifier is tacked on after a comma, making the information seem incidental. So now the main clause without that modifier is:

This makes it sound as though the book's failing is the depiction of scenes of life and death in the marine world. But why would that be a failure on its own? Surely it's okay to acknowledge that things in the ocean live and die!

The problem is the emotional overtones of those scenes, so this information can't be treated as nonessential. The importance of the modifier is better captured in (A), which introduces the phrase without the comma.

The takeaway: you don't need to start thinking more about comma rules! It's that you always have to think about meaning and logic, and sometimes the way commas are used can alter the meaning of a sentence in important ways.

I hope that clears things up!