The Restless Sea: Exploring the World Beneath the Waves [Hardcover]

Robert Kunzig (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0393045625 | ISBN-13: 978-0393045628 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Restless Sea is an homage to marine-obsessed scientists. Discover editor Robert Kunzig lovingly describes pioneering oceanographers mapping the mountains and valleys of the sea floor, discovering strange ecosystems thriving in the abyssal deep, identifying strange new gelatinous zooplankton floating in the vast blue mid-ocean realm, finding out how marine food webs work, and (most depressingly) assessing the damage done by pollution and overfishing. Kunzig loves the sea, and he admires those who study its fringes, its surface, and its depths to figure out what makes it tick.

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

From Publishers Weekly

How and when were the oceans created? How do they control our climate? What does the ocean floor look like? Kunzig, European editor of Discover magazine, addresses these and other questions in this engaging book, which clearly conveys scientific advances dispelling the myth that the deep sea floor is a "changeless, monotonous, should-be-desert." In truth, Kunzig states, it rivals the rain forests in species diversity. Kunzig describes the unique creatures of the deep?from transparent comb jellies more flexible than a boa constrictor to fist-sized mollusks that cast webs "as big as a dining room table" to capture prey?and the extraordinarily lush Galapagos hot springs, whose "sheer mass of life" has stunned geologists. He explains a controversial proposal to reverse global warming with the help of phytoplankton (single living cells that remove carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis), raising the thorny issue of whether scientists should interfere with ocean processes they only dimly understand. Although Kunzig is clearly concerned with environmental damage to the oceans?one chapter demonstrates the catastrophic affects of overfishing on New England cod populations?his primary goal is to provide lay readers with a better understanding of the seas. Deft use of quotations, humor and clever analogies enlivens the sometimes highly technical subject matter and makes the book a worthy glimpse into the world "beneath the waves." Line drawings and maps not seen by PW.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393045625
• ISBN-13: 978-0393045628
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,838,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Restless Sea, August 30, 2000

By 

Thomas Breit (Shoreline, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Restless Sea: Exploring the World Beneath the Waves (Hardcover)

Absolutely the only uninteresting thing in this book is the title (which sounds like the title of a filmstrip you might have watched in school in about the sixth grade, back in the 60's.) It's a survey of what's known about the oceans, from their formation (the current thinking is that the water came from comets) and oceanography, what the engine is that keeps continental drift going (gravity), why jellyfish and so many other sea creatures are transparent (because underwater, there's no reason to waste resources on features like pigment) on and on and on, a wealth of information explained and described perfectly lucidly. He has a gift for writing very well, explaining technical information to the non-technical layman (I was a history major) as well as John McPhee ever could. It turns out that we have mapped the surface of Venus more accurately than the ocean floor.

So much of what I thought I knew about the ocean is wrong. Remember those relief maps you see, which show the continental shelf dropping off like the grand canyon into the abyss? Turns out that's not accurate, the continental shelf actually slopes at a very gentle rate, not as steep as the mountain passes the Tour de France racers climb. The maps exaggerate the slopes by a factor of ten, emphasizing the presence of the features over their accuracy.

There is so much information in here that I was feeling, as I approached the end of the book, that I should go back through and read it again, for all the stuff I missed.

The story isn't told in the first person plural, like a textbook, but rather is related through the stories of the scientists who made the discoveries. For instance, much of our current understanding of how continental drift works was done by a scientist heating a pan of paraffin in his kitchen. Because it's focuses on the stories of the scientists, it's a story as much about the development of science as about strict oceanography, how the limits of knowledge shift as our ability to ask questions and interpret the answers changes.

I could go on and on and on, but I won't. This is a wonderful, fascinating book about a very important topic. Read it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stop global warming with a couple of iron freighters, January 4, 2001

By 

Philip Greenspun (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Restless Sea: Exploring the World Beneath the Waves (Hardcover)

Did you know that we could end 17% of the excess carbon dioxide that we generate every year to the bottom of the ocean? And do it by fertilizing the plankton with iron spread from a freighter? And that this has actually been tested by marine scientists? If not, read The Restless Sea and learn this plus dozens of other fun facts to know and tell. Kunzig is a kind writer. If a scientist has no personality, he writes about the science. If a scientist happens to be a truly warped human being, we get a paragraph or two about the warpage before Kunzig dives back into the science. If you hate James Gleick's endlessly tedious books (e.g., Chaos), you'll be refreshed by Kunzig's work.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Restless Sea, March 12, 2000

By 

Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Restless Sea: Exploring the World Beneath the Waves (Hardcover)

Although written by a talented journalist rather than an oceanographer (probably a reading plus anyway), it proficiently introduces the reader to recent discoveries in oceanography and to the personalities responsible for the research. Most texts on the field are somewhat more pedantic. Mr. Kunzig's approach is one of personalizing the subject by introducing the reader to the people behind the it. He gives the reader a greater feeling for the excitement and enthusiasm that such individuals bring to their field of study. I would recommend it to anyone with at least some knowledge of oceanography who is interested in knowing more of the individuals who have contributed to it.