7As a diving photojournalist, HILLARY HAUSER has gone solo to 200 feet on the outside of a Hawaiian crater, explored sinkholes and caves in South Australia, slid into a flooded cavern underneath a mountain in Death Valley, gone down the face of a huge Fijian wave, and crashed on the backside of Molokini Island, Hawaii, in a canoe with six other people. She has chronicled the lives, and deaths, of fishermen, including a dear friend killed by a white shark.

In "Dancing on Waves" Hauser tells the story of her most challenging episode of all: a frightening plunge into a deep, dark hole of cancer, relationship failure, and depression. She describes her climb back to the surface - and sunlight - again, a journey that offers a front-seat view into the sea and its creatures, fishermen and the dangers they face, the minds of daredevil surfers who ride enormous waves, and the insights of stellar explorers like Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man up Mt. Everest. This story describes how the paralyzing calamity she encountered propelled her to start a citizens' action group for the ocean, called Heal the Ocean, which, over 20 years later, is an important nationally-recognized organization.