One of Australia’s best non-fiction writers Michael Veitch has interviewed the men and women who worked on board CSIRO’s Marine National Facility research vessel Southern Surveyor, to produce an engaging and sometimes dramatic account of their adventures.

The book includes a chapter on Professor Colin Woodroffe a coastal geomorphologist from the University of Wollongong, who while studying a spectacular remnant volcano on board Southern Surveyor, near Lord Howe Island, uncovered the southern-most living corals in the Pacific Ocean.