Restless Sea

The sea covers seven-tenths of the Earth, but only a small percentage of it has been mapped. It contains millions of species of animal and plants but only a few thousand of them have been identified. It controls the climate but it is not understood how. It is the last frontier and yet it seems so familiar that it is sometimes forgotten how little is known about it. This work chronicles the knowledge accumulated over the past few decades which has transformed the view of the sea. It looks at the sea, from the Big Bang to the far-off future when the planet will become a waterless rock; from the lush crowds of life at sea floor hot springs to the invisible, jewel-like plants that floats on the sea surface; and from the restless shifting of the tectonic plates to the sweep of the ocean currents.