As a young girl, Hannah Stowe was raised at the tide's edge on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, falling asleep to the sweep of the lighthouse beam. Now in her midtwenties, working as a marine biologist and sailor, Stowe draws on her professional experiences sailing tens of thousands of miles in the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea, and the Caribbean to explore the human relationship with wild waters. Why is it, she asks, that she and so many others have been drawn to life at sea-and what might the water around us be able to teach us? Braiding her powerful and deeply personal narrative and illustrations with stories of six keystone marine creatures-the fire crow, sperm whale, wandering albatross, humpback whale, shearwater, and the barnacle-Stowe invites readers to fall in love, as she has, with the sea and those that call it home, and to discover the majesty, wonder, and vulnerability of the underwater world.