The deepest map : the high-stakes race to chart the world's oceans /Laura Trethewey.

"Five oceans - the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, and the Southern - cover approximately 70 percent of the Earth. Until recently, we've known little about what lies beneath them. Now, the race is on to completely map the ocean's floor by 2030, and Laura Trethewey documents this race to the bottom, following global efforts around the world, from crowdsourcing to advances in technology to recent scientific discoveries to tales of dangerous dives in untested and costly submersibles. In The Deepest Map, ocean discovery converges with humanity's origin story; in mapping the ocean floor, scientists are actively tracing our roots back to the most inhospitable places on earth where life began - and flourished. But for every conservationist looking to protect the seafloor, there are others who see its commercial potential. Will a new map exacerbate pollution and the degradation of this natural resource? How will the race remake political power structures in years to come? Trethewey probes these questions as countries and conglomerates wrestle over the riches that may lie at the bottom of the sea."--