The Earth System: Oceanography

Four billion years old, the oceans formed as the Earth's scorching surface cooled, the primordial atmosphere condensed, and torrential rains fell. Their color is the unique signature of our blue planet, their composition a chemical cocktail of remarkable variety, their waters a theater of constant change.  Oceans: An Illustrated Reference tells the story of this last great frontier. With hundreds of beautiful full-color photographs and explanatory diagrams, charts, and maps, Oceans combines the visual splendor of ocean life with up-to-date scientific information to provide an invaluable and fascinating resource on this vital realm. Covering all major areas of oceanographic knowledge and research,

"This is a superb book. The authors are to be commended. Not only did I find the book informative and useful, but as an ichthyhologist [fish expert] and former director of a marine conservation non-governmental organization, I learned new information." - Neil Alfonso, Research Services, Canadian Museum of Nature The world's oceans contain habitats that are as different from one another as a rainforest is from a desert. Oceanography is little more than a century old, and scientists now explore the sea in specialized submersibles and scan its features from space. Oceans explores the mysteries of these fascinating worlds beneath the waves. From the coastline to the deepest trench, oceans host an astonishing variety of marine life. Some are rare, some bizarre, some of breathtaking beauty. Each form of life has adapted to the extreme conditions of ocean life in unique and fascinating ways. This book features hundreds of color illustrations and photographs that reveal the oceans like never before: The Blue Planet: 71% of Earth is covered by oceans that are largely unexplored Exploring the Ocean: from ancient times to the age of satellites Ocean Life: the circle of life from plankton to whales Into the Deep: the origins of life in a world of darkness The Fringes: marine life where the oceans meet the land The Human Impact: the wealth of the oceans and how to protect them.

Computer-generated maps of the sea floor reveal all the secrets of the deep. The illustrations are backed by extensive captions.

Published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of the most remarkably successful books ever written about the natural world. Rachel Carson's rare ability to combine scientific insight with moving, poetic prose catapaulted her book to first place on The New York Times best-seller list, where it ruled for thirty-one consecutive weeks. It remained on the list for more than a year and a half and ultimately sold well over a million copies, has been translated into 28 languages, inspired an Academy Award-winning documentary, and won both the 1952 National Book Award and the John Burroughs Medal. This classic work remains as fresh today as when it first appeared. Carson's writing teems with stunning, memorable images--the newly formed Earth cooling in perpetual gloom beneath an endlessly overcast sky; the centuries of nonstop rain that created the oceans; giant squids battling sperm whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface; and incredibly powerful tides moving 100 billion tons of water daily in the Bay of Fundy. Carson describes the hidden mountains and canyons of the ocean deeps and how they are now being mapped; the ceaseless power of the winds, waves, and currents; the meaning of the ocean to humanity--the heritage of the sea that we carry in our bodies--and the riches to be found in every cubic mile of seawater ($93,000,000 in gold alone). In short, she captures the mystery and allure of the ocean with a compelling blend of imagination and expertise.

The deep sea is teeming with life, most of which has gone unseen by human eyes. Scientists are beginning to explore this fascinating realm of unusual sea creatures and volatile volcanos, using once-secret military technology now freed up by the end of the Cold War. See the timeline for a short history of this. In the Universe Below, William Broad takes a fresh look at this recent surge of exploration and discovery, and brings his readers along on some of his journeys into the deep. In 1993, author William Broad joined scientists on a two-week expedition off the Oregon/Washington coast. Their aim was to examine the Juan de Fuca Ridge and to study how volcanic heat spawns life on the ocean floor. The crew voyaged 250 miles off-shore on a 210-feet long carrier ship, The Atlantis II, which each day lowered three members 1.5 miles into the deep via Alvin, a 25-feet long submersible vessel. * * * Links Meet Alvin Garden of Eden Chimneys of the Deep Sea A Brief Chronology of Sea Exploration * * * Pulitzer Prize winner William J. Broad takes us on an epic journey to the planet's last and most exotic frontier -- the depths of the sea. The Universe Below examines how we are illuminating its dark recesses in a rush of discovery, uncovering hidden worlds of alien creatures, living fossils, lost treasures, precious metals, and perhaps even the place where life itself first arose billions of years ago. Broad takes us on breathtaking dives and expeditions -- to the Azores, to the Titanic,., to hot springs teeming with bizarre life, to icy fissures aswarm with gulper eels, vampire squids, and gelatinous beasts longer than a city bus. We meet legendary explorers at the forefront of deep research and go with them as they probe the ancient mysteries of the deep. This universe below encompasses the vast majority of the Earth's habitable space and nurtures perhaps ten times as many species of life as are known on land. Broad shows that the abyss also holds millions of humanity's lost artworks and treasures -- more than all the world's museums combined. Yet, remarkably, human eyes up to now have glimpsed perhaps only a billionth of this unfamiliar realm, a place of crushing pressure and eternal darkness. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, including hundreds of talks and interviews, Broad takes us to the cutting edge of the exploratory surge and reveals how it is powered by a wave of once-secret technologies. At a cost of untold billions, the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and othercold-war contestants forged these marvels to spy and fight and plunder the deep. Today, these wonders and the poeple who made and ran them are catalyzing an unprecedented speedup in civilian efforts to illuminate the inky depths. Broad shows how the rush into the deep is revealing not only great mysteries and riches but great dangers as well, including the deadly radioactive debris of the cold war. Deep pollution, mining, and fishing threaten this frontier with ecological upset and species extinction. We will either destroy the sea through ignorance or save it, and ourselves, with the kinds of knowledge we are now gaining in the exploratory speedup. The Universe Below is an unforgettable journey to the universe in our own backyard.