Anyone who spends time working with seabirds inevitably starts thinking about what the birds get up to in the vastness of the sea. Where do they go when they head away from land, diminishing to a tiny speck in the distance? What are they doing out there? How on Earth do they manage to search for food in those trackless blue expanses, braving the winds and the waves, before returning home again? Before the advent of tracking devices, the majority of a seabird’s life at sea remained a mystery, but now—with the availability of an array of data loggers, satellite tags, geolocators, and other electronic devices—these mysteries are revealing themselves at a staggering pace. This new information forms the crux of Far From Land: The Mysterious Lives of Seabirds by Michael Brooke.