"A silent spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how just 50 years of destructive--and ever accelerating--oceanic change threatens the very existence of life on Earth. Legendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a global ecosystem on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis unless we act immediately. Our time is running out, she warns, and nowhere is this clearer than in the seas, which cover three quarters of the planet's surface--a vast, virtually unexplored water world upon which every living thing depends"--Inside cover.