How does the ocean work?

Helen Czerski, a physicist, explains the ocean as a single engine driven by sunlight, in which currents, salt, heat and wind move water around the planet and shape weather, climate and the lives of people on its shores.

Rachel Carson’s 1951 bestseller describes the ocean from the formation of its basins to tides, currents, islands and the life of the surface and the deep. Some of its science has since changed, but the prose still carries readers across the whole sea.

Robert Kunzig tells how oceanographers learned what lies below the waves, from seafloor spreading and deep-sea vents to the currents and chemistry that make the ocean part of Earth’s climate.

Laura Trethewey reports on the international effort to map the entire seafloor, following scientists, explorers and investors, and asks who benefits when mining companies and governments can see the bottom of the sea.

Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist and former chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, surveys the ocean in maps, photographs and diagrams, from tides and currents to marine life, climate and protection.