CONTENTS 1 Inside the Underplane 1 2 The Bazillionaire’s Baby 16 3 We’re Not Entertainment 37 4 He Who Bathes Beneath Waterfalls 54 5 Hawking Headquarters 69 6 A Dangerous Decision 89 7 Two Thousand Feet Down 100 8 An Aquatic Investigation 114 9 Mrs Winterbottom’s Molars 128 10 The Glimmer and the Gull 140 11 A Party for a Prince 153 12 The Brutal Breath of Paka’a 176
13 Spider Sailing 191 14 Answers in the Stars 202 15 frank to the Rescue 216 16 The Real Saboteur 231 17 Criminally Shaped 241 18 The Art of War 252 19 Operation Turkish Delight 274 20 An Absolute Wreck 291 Eleven Absolutely Essential Questions About the Deep Blue Sea 298 Our Big Blue Ocean An Experiment by Bill Nye 304
1 Inside the Underplane The cliffs of Nihoa Island stood tall as we soared above the calm blue water Nihoa means toothed in Hawaiian but the jagged mass of gray-green rock jutting up out of the Pacific Ocean looked like the rotten molar of a sea monster We were flying low in a small six-seater airplane and I really really didn’t want to crash into that tooth For about the fifteenth time I checked my seat belt Our pilot the bazillionaire computer scientist Ashley Hawking was rambling about the annoying birds that nested on the island But I didn’t care about finches or swallows An eagle could have chest-bumped my window and it would not have shifted my focus If we continued on our current course we were going to smash into the jagged wall like an egg launched from a slingshot The plane’s engine roared My stomach spun 1
