Alien Ocean immerses readers in worlds being newly explored by marine biologists worlds usually out of sight & reach the deep sea the microscopic realm & oceans beyond national boundaries Working alongside scientists at sea & in labs in Monterey Bay Hawai'i the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution & the Sargasso Sea & at undersea volcanoes in the eastern Pacific Stefan Helmreich charts how revolutions in genomics bioinformatics & remote sensing have pressed marine biologists to see the sea as animated by its smallest inhabitants marine microbes Thriving in astonishingly extreme conditions such microbes have become key figures in scientific & public debates about the origin of life climate change biotechnology & even the possibility of life on other worlds