“Meticulously researched and elegantly written, this book answers questions about the ocean I didn’t even know I had. For the first time, I feel I truly understand the other two-thirds of our planet. Anyone who loves the sea should read this book.” ―Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm
A vivid, up-to-date tour of the Earth's last frontier, a remote and mysterious realm that nonetheless lies close to the heart of even the most land-locked reader. The sea covers seven-tenths of the Earth, but we have mapped only a small percentage of it. The sea contains millions of species of animals and plants, but we have identified only a few thousand of them. The sea controls our planet's climate, but we do not really understand how. The sea is still the frontier, and yet it seems so familiar that we sometimes forget how little we know about it. Just as we are poised on the verge of exploiting the sea on an unprecedented scale-mining it, fertilizing it, fishing it out-this book reminds us of how much we have yet to learn. More than that, it chronicles the knowledge explosion that has transformed our view of the sea in just the past few decades, and made it a far more interesting and accessible place. From the Big Bang to that far-off future time, two billion years from now, when our planet will be a waterless rock; from the lush crowds of life at seafloor hot springs to the invisible, jewel-like plants that float at the sea surface; from the restless shifting of the tectonic plates to the majestic sweep of the ocean currents, Kunzig's clear and lyrical prose transports us to the ends of the Earth."synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Part of Kunzig's purpose in writing the book is to highlight how little we actually know about the sea, especially now that we have the power to permanently damage it. We've got a lot to learn yet, but we've come a long way from the early oceanographers who had very little data to help them map the seafloor: "To say that they relied heavily on intuition in sketching the seafloor is to engage in euphemism: they made most of it up."
But the unknown represents opportunity and excitement for scientists. Kunzig clearly captures the thrill of discovery that makes otherwise sane people jump on boats and head out beyond sight of land, risking seasickness, numbing cold, and even death. Here he captures the moment when scientists realized for the first time that life existed down to the very bottom of the sea:
From the 150 pounds of grey, chalky mud, he and his collaborators sifted five species of mollusk, two species of echinoderm, an annelid worm or two, a sponge, numerous single-cell foraminiferans, and more.... Now the deep sea was, once and for all, alive; and the idea of an azoic zone anywhere on Earth's surface should have been dead, once and for all.
Kunzig's tour of the world's oceans and the scientists who study them is full of the joy of discovery. The Restless Sea makes you understand why a couple of echinoderms might be cause for a party. --Therese Littleton
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