The Sea Around Us

by Rachel Carson, Ann H. Zwinger (Foreword), Jeffrey S. Levinton (Afterword)

Originally published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of the most influential books ever written about the natural world. Rachel Carson's ability to combine scientific insight with poetic prose catapulted her book to the top of The New York Times best-seller list, where it remained for more than a year and a half. Ultimately it sold well over a million copies, was translated into 28 languages, inspired an Academy Award-winning documentary, and won both the National Book Award and the John Burroughs Medal.

The Sea Around Us remains as fresh today as when it first appeared over six decades ago. Carson's genius for evoking the power and primacy of the world's bodies of water, combining the cosmic and the intimate, remains almost unmatched: the newly formed Earth cooling beneath an endlessly overcast sky; the centuries of nonstop rain that created the oceans; giant squids battling sperm whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface; the power of the tides moving 100 billion tons of water daily in one bay alone; the seismic waves known as tsunamis that periodically remind us of the oceans' overwhelmingly destructive power. The seas sustain human life and imperil it. Today, with the oceans endangered by the dumping of medical waste and ecological disasters such as the Exxon oil spill in Alaska, the gradual death of the Great Barrier Reef, and the melting of the polar ice caps, Carson's book provides a timely reminder of both the fragility and the centrality of the ocean and the life that abounds within it. Anyone who loves the sea, or who is concerned about our natural environment, will want to read, or re-read, this classic work.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Environment, Biology, Ecology, Classics

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1951

About the author

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.

Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and it inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

A variety of groups ranging from government institutions to environmental and conservation organizations to scholarly societies have celebrated Carson's life and work since her death. Perhaps most significantly, on June 9, 1980, Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States. A 17¢ Great Americans series postage stamp was issued in her honor the following year; several other countries have since issued Carson postage as well.

Carson's birthplace and childhood home in Springdale, Pennsylvania — now known as the Rachel Carson Homestead—became a National Register of Historic Places site, and the nonprofit Rachel Carson Homestead Association was created in 1975 to manage it. Her home in Colesville, Maryland where she wrote Silent Spring was named a National Historic Landmark in 1991. Near Pittsburgh, a 35.7 miles (57 km) hiking trail, maintained by the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy, was dedicated to Carson in 1975. A Pittsburgh bridge was also renamed in Carson's honor as the Rachel Carson Bridge. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection State Office Building in Harrisburg is named in her honor. Elementary schools in Gaithersburg, Montgomery County, Maryland, Sammamish, Washington and San Jose, California were named in her honor, as were middle schools in Beaverton, Oregon and Herndon, Virginia (Rachel Carson Middle School), and a high school in Brooklyn, New York.

Between 1964 and 1990, 650 acres (3 km2) near Brookeville in Montgomery County, Maryland were acquired and set aside as the Rachel Carson Conservation Park, administered by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. In 1969, the Coastal Maine National Wildlife Refuge became the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge; expansions will bring the size of the refuge to about 9,125 acres (37 km2). In 1985, North Carolina renamed one of its estuarine reserves in honor of Carson, in Beaufort.

Carson is also a frequent namesake for prizes awarded by philanthropic, educational and scholarly institutions. The Rachel Carson Prize, founded in Stavanger, Norway in 1991, is awarded to women who have made a contribution in the field of environmental protection. The American Society for Environmental History has awarded the Rachel Carson Prize for Best Dissertation since 1993. Since 1998, the Society for Social Studies of Science has awarded an annual Rachel Carson Book Prize for "a book length work of social or political relevance in the area of science and technology studies."

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_C...

Reviews

[P. Lundburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This amazing book, the winner of the 1952 National Book Award, is my second Rachel Carson book read. I picked it up in part because I'm determined to keep up with my love of nature writing/Nature Literature, but perhaps more because there's something about Carson's style that really pulls me in. If you're of the same type, you need to add this book to your list, but in the upper half. It isn't just Carson's insight into eco-systems that's so extraordinary, it's her ability to . . . well, simply write.

Carson lapses into the technical at times, and she did with Silent Spring as well, but there are more reflective, descriptive, and observation portions in this book. It's fantastic when she writes with passion about the world she loves. The Sea Around Us is a bit dated in terms of the science, so it's important to focus on the holistic message and the generalities in terms of scientific writing . . . but honestly, that's not why it should be read (unless you're a science historian). The real reason to read this gem is to allow Carson's fine ecologist mind to show you a different way of seeing the world of the Earth's seas and their importance for the balance of our world's ecosystems. She traces the history of the oceans' developments while delving into nearly poetic prose that rivals the passion of John Muir and the fine stylistic writing of Stephen Jay Gould.

I love the sea, and always have. I have spent time on a ship (my U.S. Coast Guard days) and as a charter boat captain in Alaska, and I am happiest when I'm on or at the sea. That makes me particularly excited about this book. If you love the oceans, nautical things, marine life, or are simply concerned about the world you live in, then pick up this book . . . and don't forget to drop me a line and thank me for turning you on to it! (insert huge grinning emoticon)

[Cherisa B · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only reason I’m not rating this 5 stars is because at 60 years old much of the info is dated, but it’s an astonishing work of science, history, and dare I say, poetry. Earth’s oceans are the big news of the universe - as far as we know, the only seas in all creation. They drive the life of the planet and as citizens of Earth, we should know about them in all their complex glory. This book surveys many aspects of them and why they are so awesome. It’s also a wonderful reminder of the age of discovery and the scientific search to understand our world, which seems to be slipping away.

[L.G. Cullens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having first read Silent Spring (Rachel Carson's fourth published book) back in the sixties, I've delved into her other books over the years. The Sea Around Us was Carson's second published book (the first being her 1941 book Under the Sea Wind) and the one that launched her into the public eye and a second career as a writer and conservationist. This book deals with the science of the the sea known at that time, ranging from its primeval beginnings to the time of the book's publication.

Opening paragraph:
"BEGINNINGS are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginnings of that great mother of life, the sea. Many people have debated how and when the earth got its ocean, and it is not surprising that their explanations do not always agree. For the plain and inescapable truth is that no one was there to see, and in the absence of eye-witness accounts there is bound to be a certain amount of disagreement. So if I tell here the story of how the young planet Earth acquired - an ocean, it must be a story pieced together from many sources and containing whole chapters the details of which we can only imagine. The story is founded on the testimony of the earth’s most ancient rocks, which were young when the earth was young; on other evidence written on the face of the earth’s satellite, the moon; and on hints contained in the history of the sun and the whole universe, of star-filled space. For although no man was there to witness this cosmic birth, the stars and the moon and the rocks were there, and, indeed, had much to do with the fact that there is an ocean."

I've found all Rachel Carson's books informative, interesting, and easily readable, even poetic. In understanding our sustaining biosphere better, we might do a better job of leaving a habitable Earth for our children.

As a side thought, I was privileged in my youth to listen to Shoshone elders convey ancient legends, among them how our little blue canoe began as fire, then water, then Turtle Island was formed. These were legends that had been passed down through many thousands of years, and though they were stylistic of the culture I've always wondered how they came by the premise.

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" ~ T. S. Eliot, The Rock, 1934

[Neal Adolph · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should probably read more books like this. The sort that sit back and think about the world on a totally inhuman scale. The ones that think about how oceans were made and how timeless they have been ever since they appeared. Timeless and ever changing through time.

I don't think anything in the world feels as engrossing as the ocean, especially to a prairie boy like myself. I'm from the interior of a continent. The closest ocean to my hometown is nearly 2000km away, as the crow flies. But now I live next to it, maybe 500 meters away from the eastern tip of that great Pacific body. I have spent many hours crossing it, watching it, listening to it. Wondering about its rhythms and forces and long commitments. When I saw this old, first edition on the shelf of a local bookstore, the hard cover green like algae, I knew it was time to learn something about my new water-bodied neighbour.

Even if that something is surely rather dated now, nearly 70 years of learning after its publication, an ocean of science and knowledge and resources having been pulled and learned and discovered by humans for the first time, I certainly learned a few things about that water by reading this book. And, thankfully, the learning was couched in a gentle and beautiful prose, the sort that could entertain and delight and mystify in equal turn, according to the needs and desires of a masterful writer.

After reading this book, it's clear to me that I have an insufficient appreciation for what all that water does, can do, and contains. And all of that stuff, down there under that shifting line of water and air (we can it the sea level), is fascinating; just as the natural world almost always is. Super tides, streams of water pushing water from equator to polar region, the movement of cold water to the surface and the cluster of fish around these nutrient rich spaces, the waves that are under the waves we can see and splash around in, and the waves that are under those ones. Every chapter in this book felt like a cosmic opening of something that couldn't be held in the palm of a hand, but could wrap around an entire earth.

When I was a kid I wondered if a droplet of water in the lakes of my home province could one day reach the ocean, and now I know that a droplet of water in that ocean has likely, at some point in its chemical life, touched the shores of other oceans, other lakes, and nourished other lands. Truly, totally, completely incredible.

It was fascinating to read this book in 2020, which, for a whole host of reasons, has felt like a year beyond comprehension for us bipeds. My suspicion is that the ocean hasn't really noticed much of anything. But I also think the ocean is noticing our presence in different ways. The book, for the most part, believes in constance. The waves and the wind and the currents have existed for tens of thousands if not millions of years. Though there are early hints that climate is changing, it is presented something that is natural and destined according to the world's order; it's time for a shift. That shift isn't seen as an existential threat, and the full scope of what could be coming isn't even perceived. Collapse isn't a word in Rachel's dictionary in 1951.

Of course, we know differently now. This book is a historic relic of calmness and certainty, which made it both beautiful and impossible to place into our current context. It's a historical relic. It captures a world and a mindset that has escaped us as we have ruined the environment around us. I think that might add to what makes it special in 2020, but maybe I'm silly.

I should read more natural history written by naturalists. I should include in that list more books by Rachel Carson.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without reservation I can say this is one of the most amazing reading experiences I have ever had. I rarely read non-fiction in book form. When I do, I read memoirs, biographies (usually of writers and artists), and occasionally history, but never science. I decided to read The Sea Around Us because it was a non-fiction bestseller in 1951, a year that falls within my Big Fat Reading Project, but also because Rachel Carson is one of my heroines.

She is an eloquent and inspiring science writer. She writes about scientific information better than some sci fi authors I could mention. As far as my interactions with the sea go, I have always loved sitting on a beach and watching waves. But I do not enjoy swimming or boating. I like to keep my feet on solid ground.

Now I have realized that I had little to no idea about more than half of the planet I live on. I read the book slowly, a chapter at a time over several weeks, with a globe and the Internet close by. It was like taking a tour of the world and getting oriented in a whole new way.

I learned about the history of planet Earth, at least as far as what was known by 1951 plus new developments up to 1961 when the book was revised. I learned about currents, winds, tides, and oceanic wild life; about the ice ages and the relationship of continents to oceans. Most importantly I learned that what we do on land ends up in the seas; that though we keep learning more about the seas we still keep doing our best to use them to spread radioactivity and toxins.

All that learning was excellent and good for me but what I loved most was a feeling I got in every chapter. It was as if I were in a spaceship far out from the earth's surface, looking down and seeing the whole big picture. This was a better high than any substance has ever given me; almost better even than music has ever given me.

Second to that effect was a suspicion that while it is crazy to use up natural resources faster than they can be replaced and stupid to toxify our world and ourselves, the oceans will outlast us and possibly transmute mankind's insanity and stupidity into more life and future. We are racing ahead at an almost incomprehensible speed but still the earth, its continents and oceans are almost eternal. When it comes to material existence, the closest thing I have to faith is that the cycle of life goes on. Rachel Carson's book renewed that faith for me.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading nonfiction books on marine biology or ecology isn’t something I would normally choose to do on holiday but Rachel Carson writes narrative nonfiction that turns science and observation into a thrilling and insightful pageturner. And this second book in the trilogy, a New York Times bestseller, is just as engaging as her debut was. I loved it.

In The Sea Around Us Carson makes the sea her subject, addressing it in three parts, Mother Sea, The Restless Sea and Man and the Sea About Him.

Its potency lies in the charm and skill of the writing, its erudition and rich organisation of facts, and in its personal reticence – how quietly it captivates our attention. Before we know it we are charmed into learning about the wonders of the ocean, then into a deep awareness of not only their health but how it affects that of the whole natural world. Through sharing Carson’s research, we become acutely sensitive to the interdependence of life. – Ann Zwinger , Introduction

The Sea as Teacher

Though published in 1951, therefore knowing our understanding of marine ecology has continued to develop, most of us likely won’t have read or studied too deeply about the sea, in fact, many remain (with good reason) in fear of it – not understanding her mood changes, dangerous rips, turbulent surf and the menacing creatures that live within her depths.

Here a casual reader with an interest in nature writing of a literary kind will learn and absorb much about the sea, the ocean, her characteristics, behaviours, secrets and influences with little effort, such is her mastery of narrating a serious subject in an engaging and memorable way.

Talking about the seasons, we discover the sea too experiences events that herald those forthcoming changes.

The lifelessness, the hopelessness, the despair of the winter sea are an illusion. Everywhere are the assurances that the cycle has come to the full, containing the means of its own renewal. There is the promise of a new spring in the very iciness of the winter sea, in the chilling of the water, which must, before many weeks, become so heavy that it will plunge downward, precipitating the overturn that is the first act in the drama of spring.

From Sea to Land, and the Moon Question

Taking us back to the beginning we learn how the sea might have come about, reading of a once believed theory that the moon may have been a child of the earth, born of a great tidal wave of earthly substance, torn off and hurled into space, leaving a scar or depression on the surface of the globe, that now holds the Pacific Ocean.

Whether or not that is true, we do know the moon affects the tides and cycles of many animals. Where the Moon came from continues to be debated today.

We familiarise with the evolution of tides, the moon effect, the significant evaporation of the Mediterranean which makes it excessively salty and more dense and learn of the rush of a current from the Atlantic that replaces it, lighter water that pours past Gibraltar in surface streams of great strength.

It was not until Silurian time, some 350 million years ago, that the first pioneer of land life crept out on the shore.

When they went ashore the animals that took up a land life carried with them a part of the sea in their bodies, a heritage which they passed on to their children and which even today links each land animal with its origin in the ancient sea. Fish, amphibian, and reptile – warm-blooded bird and mammal – each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water.

Providing a succinct and easily readable account, we begin to understand the complexity of ocean currents, of streams within oceans, their discovery by sailors and captains, the reluctance of men to share their navigation maps, the effect on human migrations.

We read how interconnected everything is, the winds, waves, the currents, the deep abyss, the tendencies of schools of fish, explanations for their sudden disappearance and the effect on our livelihoods; the appearance of new land formations via underwater volcanoes, creating islands that emerge from the sea, we hear of airborne spiders riding high for miles, how life emerges on a protuberance from the sea and how easily it can be wiped out again.

It closes with the foretelling of the climate change we are already in, and the many that have been.

It is almost certainly true we are in the warming-up stage following the Pleistocene glaciation – that the world’s climate over the next thousands of years, will grow considerably warmer before beginning a downward swing into another Ice Age.

Rachel Carson had an incredible gift of writing the scientific complexity of the ecosystem of the sea and her creatures, sharing what was known at the time and hints of that which wasn’t in a captivating way, born of a great passion and love of the sea, the shore and all that lived within or depended on it.

I read this on holiday sitting next to a lake, watching on a micro level those same factors that move a body of water, that give it life, occasionally seeing the little fish who’ve made a home in it, the plant life in the water and beside it. And we humans, making it our playground for the summer. In much appreciation and gratitude.

“The shore is an ancient world. I can’t think of any more exciting place to be than down in the low-tide world, when the ebb tide falls very early in the morning, and the world is full of salt smell, and the sound of water, and the softness of fog.” Rachel Carson, Marine Biologist (1907-1964)

[Herman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book will add more to this review later, the book went straight from my hand to a love one’s, you got to read this I told them so I say the same thing to you I would say to my own blood this book is awesome! If your interested in science, nature, or global warming why wouldn’t you want to know what one of the most thoughtful and probing scientific minds of the day thought about these issues eighty years ago. It’s a very important book. Can't refer to the page because as I said before I gave the book away, (Books are meant to be shared) but there were a number of ah-ha moments when reading this book, going buy another copy just to keep it in my library for easy reference.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could almost give this four stars - her writing is, as others have said, poetic, and I certainly learned a lot about the ocean. However, I disliked having to wade through so much evolutionary content, and found the last paragraph particularly disturbing - she almost seems to deify the ocean. But I know it is important to read and discuss other beliefs and opinions with my kids, so appreciate the importance of including some books like this in our curriculum.

[Notael Elrein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished yet another brilliant book by Rachel Carson, now dated, but a great account on the sea. Here you read about the deep ocean, how the waves are affected by various factors, the minerals of the sea, the temperature of the sea, the nature of islands. A lot of stuff I entirely forgot from my childhood or perhaps I did not pay much attention to the broader facts of the sea despite it being so fascinating. I do want to read about the oceans more. They are all around us.

A lot of locations, names, and specifics went over my head, but I do not care too much to dwell over them when I am not familiar with a subject. Perhaps it is the novelty of the subject which makes me want to give a high rating. I love anything that challenges me, and I want to embrace that more, and more.

I had more affinity towards certain subjects. I believe the animals, and the plant life fascinates me way more than learning about how people sailed the seas or used explosives to get info about the depths. I learned about the fragility of the islands, and how they are utmost incompatible with humanity. We do like to demolish anything unique, sensitive, emotional. The way we demolish nature is the way we demolish ourselves.

I feel a very great affinity with people studying animals, and biologists. I was very drawn as a child to the most dark, and terrible aspects of humanity that nobody wanted to look at. And caring about the wild animals must be one of these albeit with a different kind of horror attached, the horror of apathy, and negligence. I need to return to this neglected aspect of myself, and revive it. That sounds very metaphorical in itself.

Nature is all around us, but we don’t really explore it, and we do not really live with it. I need to be the change. I need to look at what I do, and what I can do. I am living my life, and following my interests. I live with myself.

[Ángela D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

este libro es una auténtica maravilla

[Alex McEwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember being fifteen and reading Rachel Carson’s “The Sea Around Us” for the first time. I read it on a sailboat off the Florida Keys while sport fishing for shark and mahi. And I loved it. It made the ocean feel ancient and alive, full of mystery and something mysterious. Back then it felt like Jacques Cousteau in prose. Carson taught me that the sea was not just scenery but a story.

Reading it again now was a different experience. Much of the beauty remains. Carson can still write a sentence that slows you down and makes you look again. But the book as a whole feels scattered. It struggles to decide what it wants to be. Sometimes it reads like popular science. Other times it turns into poetic meditation. At other moments it feels like a lecture on geology and deep time. The book never quite brings these strands together.

As a child, that looseness felt expansive. As an adult, it feels unfocused. The structure wanders and the momentum fades. I found myself wanting Carson to choose a clearer aim and follow it through. The ideas matter, but the shape of the book makes them harder to see. Still, I am glad Carson wrote this book. She belongs to the same imaginative world as Cousteau and, in a stranger way, maybe even Steve Zissou.

I could not help but read this book with Scripture in the back of my mind. The Bible never treats the sea as neutral. From the very beginning of history the sea is associated with Chaos. And God brings it into order. God tames Leviathan and sets bounds the waters cannot cross. Christ stands in a boat and commands the waves to be still, and they obey him. The sea is wild, dangerous, and beautiful, and only God rules it. I think I wanted Carson to show me some of that wildness again. Instead, this time around, the sea felt more clinical than alive.

I give “The Sea Around Us” three stars. It shaped my imagination when I was young. Rereading it now, I think I wanted it to capture a feeling I had when I was fifteen. And maybe that’s on me and not on Carson.

[Ezgi]

Bizi Saran Deniz, diliyle beni şaşırtan bir kitap. Denizler üzerine bir kitapta böyle edebi ve akılda kalıcı üslubu hiç beklemiyordum. Rachel Carson, deniz ekolojisiyle alakalı dönemine göre çok iyi bir kitap ortaya çıkarmış. Denizlere erişemiyoruz, dengesini bozmak mümkün değildir gibi garip anlayış var. Carson bu düşünceye karşı çıkıyor ve insanın yıkıcılığını her yere taşıdığını söylüyor. 1950de yazıldığı için geçmişe dönük tartışmaları okuyor gibi hissettim. Her ne kadar artık eskimiş görünse de çevrecilikle ilgili tarihsel önemi olan bir metin. Bilgiler, eğilimler elbette değişti. Ama tavrı ve doğa bilimlerinin hayata ne ölçüde dokunduğunu fark etmek için okunabilecek bir kitap.

[Heather Gorsett · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose in this book is beautifully gentle, making it truly worth your time, despite its outdated information and evolutionary viewpoint.

From a creation perspective, this classic inspires awe at the greatness of God. I have developed a deeper appreciation for the ocean's mysteries and complexities, from bores to maelstroms and convoluta to planetary currents.

"For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." — Romans 11:34-36

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an iconic book in so many ways. Rachel Carson is best known among environmentalists and the general public as the author of Silent Spring, which alerted the world to the damage being done by DDT. Before that however she had a long career as an aquatic biologist, working in the American department of fisheries, at the same time she wrote. Her writing is a stunningly beautiful meld of science and literature, the facts of science she writes about are a solid as textbook writing, but the heart and soul she breaths into her subject matter is the essence of art, with the highest level of craft/literature.

The sea around us is the first of her books that I ever read, longer ago than I can remember. I suspect that the lyric beauty she uses to define the ocean is part of why I ended up studying marine biology.

However, it must be remembered that it was written 70 years ago. While Rachel's job meant that she had a dizzying wealth of information and experts at her disposal when writing this, it was a long time ago. It might be difficult for someone with no science background to read this because much of the material she draws upon is no longer true. The writing is as gorgeous as ever, one falls in love with the deep tides of the oceans, while reading you are intoxicated by the scale of the oceans and their affect on the planet. But sometimes the information is wrong.

It can be a small thing, like the fact that the biological five kingdom classification system didn't get proposed until ten years after this book was published, so when talking about the plankton, one has to adjust one's brain a bit.

A bigger deal is the fact of plate tectonics! I regularly forget how incredibly recently this theory was accepted by scientists. It is so pervasive and so well understood today that it is almost inconceivable that when this book was written, a mere 70 years ago, respectable scientist still thought that mountains were formed my a kind of collapse of the outer crust inward following inner crust cooling. Of course, a great deal of what makes the ocean do what it does can be explained by tectonics and cannot even slightly be explained by anything else. So, since this book is the 'hard science' among Rachel's work, dealing with currents and winds and waves, none of which can be explained without tectonics, it is an interesting reading experience for a modern mind.

Rachel does a great job, mind you. There is even a hint that a rumour of the tectonic theory had reached her - but it was barely a glimpse.

This is a lovely introduction to so much - if you know enough not to be confused by the errors - there is a introduction to geological times (entertainingly mentioning that the continents have always been in their current forms), the evolution of animalia and the greening of the land, of glaciation periods and sea level changes. Then we get into some charmingly hardcore descriptions of wind, water, waves and the effects of the earths spin and tides. At this point, it does become quite obvious that the Pacific ocean and Australia were not nearly as well known to the author as America and Europe, well, probably geological and marine science was in it's infancy here at the time anyway. The descriptions of deep ocean waters and waves are fascinating, as are the sections on deep sea biology and exploration since it is clearly the very forefront of the research that we are reading about.

Again, the charm of reading things so out of date was strong when, discussing waves, we find that the existence of 100 ft waves was hotly debated at the time of writing. Apparently there were very earnest mathematical equations insisting that 100 ft waves were not possible. And now, we have crazy surfers traveling to Nazare in Spain to surf... SURF 100 ft waves.

The writing is lovely, so much I enjoyed. The combination of extensive knowledge (for the time) with passionate fascinating and deft, beautiful writing skills - wonderful!

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zemlja je nešto starija od dve milijarde godina. Okean je njen vršnjak. (Plava smo planeta.)

Užarena lopta se hladila i hladila i hladila. (Gas → tečno → čvrsto stanje.)
Sledile su kiše, beskrajne kiše koje su hladile koru.
Žar se povukao postavši uticajno, ćudljivo i nedostupno večno srce Zemlje.

Bilo je tu i različitih tumbanja. Moguće je da Zemlja, tako, matica Meseca - kao dokaz za to je svojevrsni ožiljak u vidu Tihog okeana, čije dno poseduje isti sastav kao Mesečeva površina.

Svašta se tu krčkalo. (Tušta i tma.)
Svašta.
Krčaklo, krčkalo i skrčkao se život.

Od protoplazme beskrajnog, praiksonskog okeana, trebalo je dugo dok se nije pojavio artropod, prvi predstavnik kopnenog života. (Pre oko 350 000 000 godina.)
Možda nismo ni morali da dospemo na tlo, no dobro.
(Rejčel Karson me je naučila i da kitovi npr. potiču, potpuno kontraintuitivno, od kopnenih životinja! Smučila im se ova vazdušna svakidašnja jadikovka pa su promenili sredinu. Bombardovan poslednjih dana slikama kako kitovi umiru od plastičnog đubreta, pomislio sam, ne bez tračka tuge, da im je povratak bio uzaludan.)

Svi elementi koji su vezani za morski sastav, ključni su za našu fizionomiju i fiziologiju. Karson veli: "svako od nas nosi u svojim venama slanu struju u kojoj su elementi natrijum, kalijum i kalcijum, kombinovani u istom odnosu kao u morskoj vodi" (20). Ne samo što je većina organizma voda, kalcijum iz kostiju vodi poreklo iz kalcijuma okeana kambijumskog perioda.

Mi smo tako mikroispostave mora, pokretni, poluautonomni i učaureni talasići svepupajućeg života. Mi smo, ako pratimo etimologiju, PLANKTON jer ova reč izvorno znači "lutalica".

Rejčel Karson kao jedna od najznačajnijih figura ekokritike ispisuje jednu zaista divnu naučnopopularnu studiju o istoriji, značaju i sveprisustvu mora. Ona nema izraženi književni dar, međutim, raspolaže izvanrednim informacijama koje su i te kako misaono podsticajne i poetski inspirativne. Pregršt zanimljivosti zaslužuje dalju poetsku obradu.

Recepcija umetnosti postaje istančanija i intenzivnija posle čitanja ovakvih knjiga - nikad morski pejzaž neću gledati na isti način, niti ću na isti način razmišljati o geografskim otkrićima, avanturama. Poetski ekskursi Rejčel Karson su, iako prisutni, retki i ne preterano inventivni, ali i izuzetno samosvesni. U pitanju je naučna skromnost. Ne moram stvarati nove svetove, ovaj svet je toliko zapanjujuć da jedva da možemo da nazremo njegovu veličinu.

Jeste, nekad će čitanje podsećati na Geografsku čitanku, na prisećanje na one silne mahom beživotno predstavljene lekcije iz hemije, biologije, fizike, pa i istorije, međutim, treba opet imati u vidu raskošnu celinu ove knjige.

Ko želi, pronaći će kako su Polinežani doživljavali zvezde i u kakvoj je to vezi sa morem, kada su prve karte za pronalaženje pristaništa (portolano) nastale, kada je prvi put upotrebljen kompas, šta nam islanske sage govore o klimatskim promenama, za šta nam sve služi brom (i u kakvoj je vezi sa mjureksom, purpurnim pužem), šta je bilo sa Krakatauom, zašto su gnjurci u pradavna vremena nosili ulje u ustima i ispuštali ga ispod površine vode, kako se organizuje ostrvski ekosistem, kako migriraju haringe, kakav je značaj golfske struje, kako je najveći potop bio pre 100 000 000 godina za vreme krede... Arhetip(sko) dobija novo značenje uz ove godine. (Gilgameš, javi se!)

Bogata nonfiction avantura.
Pa ko voli nek izvoli!

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book launched Rachel Carson’s career as a popular science literature writer. If you have never read any of her ocean books, start with this one. Her writing is unique in that she describes science facts almost poetically, weaving story after story of the wonder and mystery of the oceans. She involves the reader by asking questions and then exploring possible answers, all the while revealing new facts to the reader. Delving into marine biology, ecology (a term that she originally coined, along with the word ecosystem), oceanography and history, her topics include the beginning of the world and the first oceans, sea life in the abysmal depths, tides and the effect of long-period tides on climate, phosphorescent sea life, islands and submarine mountain ranges, early ocean exploration, and even the search for the lost continent of Atlantis. She often refers to different geological eras, and includes a convenient chart of these. She also tells much history of human interaction with the oceans. This book is almost 60 years old and represents the pinnacle of ocean knowledge in 1950. From that perspective, an amazing amount is still true and relevant, and even prophetic, today.

Update: I just perused the 1989 edition, and found both the new Introduction and the Afterward added valuable current perspectives. The Introduction by environmental writer Ann Zwinger describes the culture and times in which The Sea Around Us and other of Carson's works were written. The Afterword, by Jeffrey Levinton, expands on Carson's topics, updating them with more current research and understanding of the problems that humans have created in the oceans.

Update 12/2010: Contrary to what I stated above (as gleaned from commentary in one of Carson's sea books), both the terms ecology and ecosystem had been used by others prior to Carson, notably by British zoologist Charles Elton in his 1927 book, "Animal Ecology."

[Marielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This classic is great! Very informative, but the scientific language is engaging and readable. I learned a lot from this book. Though it was written in the 1950's and some of the theories have since been changed erased, for the most part it is accurate.

Loved the first chapter in particular where she talks about one of the theories of the moon's creation, torn from the top layer of the Earth's crust from what is now the Pacific ocean, pulled by tidal waves of force into space - as the moon.

Even though global climate change and warming had not been frequently discussed in this era, Carson makes it clear that the Earth is going through a significant stage of warming. Her explantaion at this time did not include what we now know today as being human influenced, but nonetheless, she does a great job of explaining the cycles in which our planet goes through - and how everything comes together.

It's interesting to think about the Earth and parts of our country, maybe even our home, being under water as part of an ocean in the past - and most likely in the future. How salt and minerals keep washing from the land and into the depths of the ocean, how the currents affect marine life, why waves are formed, how civilations have been lost, shipping routes kept secret, and everything else that happens, some of which is still a mystery - within the depths of the ocean.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1951, after researching her subject for eight years, Rachel Carson published The Sea Around Us. It's the story of the ocean, including its origins, the minerals in it, the tides, the currents, the life that resides in it, and more.

Carson writes in a way that is both beautiful and yet scientifically accurate (for her time). She explains complex systems in a manner that makes them explicable to even the least scientific (me) among us.

[Sarah Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blue Planet before there was Blue Planet. Rachel’s descriptions are equal parts scientific, approachable, and magical. Would have loved this as a kid

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*
Kaip mokslinė-populiarioji knyga man buvo per daug poetiška.

[JP Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the 1963 edition, the ninth printing of this, Rachel Carson's 1951 winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction. (Note: This date is taken from text on the book's jacket. However, Wikipedia says the award was in 1952.) This '63 edition included an Appendix of 16 notes (in 11 pages) by Carson that updated the mid-century science of the original with several relevant discoveries in the 12 years subsequent to first publication. Rachel Carson is in most circles more famous for "Silent Spring," her 1962 book often said to have 'launched the environmental movement.' However, "The Sea Around Us" was her 'breakout' book, and a popular phenomenon in its own right, remaining on the NYTimes Bestseller list for 86 weeks (versus 31 weeks for "The Silent Spring".) It is a fascinating (some have said 'poetic' and I would not disagree) elucidation of the most expansive feature of our planet. Carson presents its history, geography, chemistry, biology, and meteorology, and the interaction of the human race with the world's oceans. As boring as my summary in the prior sentence is, Carson's 198-page work is its diametrical opposite: thoroughly THOROUGHLY interesting and entertaining and enlightening.

[H.A. Leuschel · Rating 5 out of 5]

'For the sea lies all about us. The commerce of all lands must cross it. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it. The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at last return to the sea- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.'

[Noor Al-Shalash]

omnomnomnom :0 ate the first part of this book right
up!! Rachel Carson has such a poetic way of personifying natural elements like rocks and water and magma and stars. I absolutely adore the way she draws attention to the magic and mysticism of the natural world, and discusses geologic time scales in a way that makes you feel minute but not irrelevant.

second half of the book kind of lost me…..idgaf about european maritime exploration and mineral extraction tbh :/ but come over for tea Rachy!! setting up a seance now, we have so much to discuss about the deep sea…..

[Terris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one a lot! I'm so impressed with Rachel Carson. I also learned a lot reading Silent Spring.

My only request (to myself) would be to now read a book that follows up on the things that, to Carson's own admittance, hadn't been discovered or figured out yet, since this book was written in 1951 and is now 73 years old! A lot has been discovered since then. I'm going to have to look around to find something that "answers" some of the questions of this book.

Old or new, though, it's a good one!

[Tyler Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read through a historical lens even if some of the science is out of date.

[Joe M · Rating 5 out of 5]

A captivating and beautifully written history of the world's seas and oceans! Rachel Carson has a poet's voice and even with a lot of scientific information, it's easy to get lost in her words and descriptions. Also amazing is that over 60 years later, this National Book Award winner is still so relevant and full of interesting and timely information. In her introduction, author and naturalist Ann H. Zwinger calls The Sea Around Us one of the most perfect books she's ever read and "my ideal of what natural history should be," and I couldn't agree more. A perfect book for nature and sea lovers to learn and escape with.

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would greatly benefit from some maps in the text.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

For thousands upon thousands of years the Sunlight and the Sea and the masterless Winds have held tryst together. LLEWELYN POWYS

There isn’t much to say, you have to read and absorb this book. I am sure some, much of the science has been updated, but it is less important than the ideas Carson has about the ocean, about what is important, what still fascinates us about our planet made of earth and ocean. She famously said if there is any poetry in her writing of the ocean, it was not her that put it there but the ocean, and that resonates, that means something to one who loves the ocean as I do. I am a thalassophile and am always greedy for more of the ocean, the shore, the sand, the sun, the sunsets, the beach combing, the smell, feel of the water, the buoyancy of being in the water, the light, all the light imaginable there. I am not sure Carson spent much time with her toes in the water, Ido know she couldn’t swim; she lived in Maine where the water is decently frigid, but as a Southern New England girl, I loved the cold, sharp, salty water and wonder if she regretted it. I have been listening to my extensive seagoing playlist and wondering if she felt this way about the ocean. It is my home and my escape, my church, temple, and space; it is everything. And dissecting it into poetry the way she does are my favorite words.

If I tell here the story of how the young planet Earth acquired an ocean, it must be a story pieced together from many sources and containing whole chapters the details of which we can only imagine. The story is founded on the testimony of the earth’s most ancient rocks, which were young when the earth was young; on other evidence written on the face of the earth’s satellite, the moon; and on hints contained in the history of the sun and the whole universe of star-filled space. For although no man was there to witness this cosmic birth, the stars and moon and the rocks were there, and, indeed, had much to do with the fact that there is an ocean.

There were tides in the new earth, long before there was an ocean. In response to the pull of the sun the molten liquids of the earth’s whole surface rose in tides that rolled unhindered around the globe and only gradually slackened and diminished as the earthly shell cooled, congealed, and hardened.

That primeval ocean, growing in bulk as the rains slowly filled its basins, must have been only faintly salt. But the falling rains were the symbol of the dissolution of the continents. From the moment the rain began to fall, the lands began to be worn away and carried to the sea. It is an endless, inexorable process that has never stopped—the dissolving of the rocks, the leaching out of their contained minerals, the carrying of the rock fragments and dissolved minerals to the ocean. And over the eons of time, the sea has grown ever more bitter with the salt of the continents.

When they went ashore the animals that took up a land life carried with them a part of the sea in their bodies, a heritage which they passed on to their children and which even today links each land animal with its origin in the ancient sea. Fish, amphibian, and reptile, warm-blooded bird and mammal—each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water.

Eventually man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with an unconscious recognition of his lineage. He could not physically re-enter the ocean as the seals and whales had done. But over the centuries, with all the skill and ingenuity and reasoning powers of his mind, he has sought to explore and investigate even its most remote parts, so that he might re-enter it mentally and imaginatively.

To the human senses, the most obvious patterning of the surface waters is indicated by color. The deep blue water of the open sea far from land is the color of emptiness and barrenness; the green water of the coastal areas, with all its varying hues, is the color of life.

The sea is blue because the sunlight is reflected back to our eyes from the water molecules or from very minute particles suspended in the sea. In the journey of the light rays into deep water all the red rays and most of the yellow rays of the spectrum have been absorbed, so when the light returns to our eyes from the water molecules or from very minute particles suspended in the sea. In the journey of the light rays into deep water all the red rays and most of the yellow rays of the spectrum have been absorbed, so when the light returns to our eyes it is chiefly the cool blue rays that we see.

The saltiest ocean water in the world is that of the Red Sea, where the burning sun and the fierce heat of the atmosphere produce such rapid evaporation that the salt content is 40 parts per thousand. The Sargasso Sea, an area of high air temperatures, receiving no inflow of river water or melting ice because of its remoteness from land, is the saltiest part of the Atlantic, which in turn is the saltiest of the oceans. The polar seas, as one would expect, are the least salty, because they are constantly being diluted by rain, snow, and melting ice. Along the Atlantic coast of the United States, the salinity range from about 33 parts per thousand off Cape Cod to about 36 off Florida is a difference easily perceptible to the senses of human bathers.

FOR THE SEA AS a whole, the alternation of day and night, the passage of the seasons, the procession of the years, are lost in its vastness, obliterated in its own changeless eternity. But the surface waters are different. The face of the sea is always changing. Crossed by colors, lights, and moving shadows, sparkling in the sun, mysterious in the twilight, its aspects and its moods vary hour by hour. The surface waters move with the tides, stir to the breath of the winds, and rise and fall to the endless, hurrying forms of the waves. Most of all, they change with the advance of the seasons.

During the long months of winter in the temperate zones the surface waters have been absorbing the cold. Now the heavy water begins to sink, slipping down and displacing the warmer layers below. Rich stores of minerals have been accumulating on the floor of the continental shelf—some freighted down the rivers from the lands; some derived from sea creatures that have died and whose remains have drifted down to the bottom; some from the shells that once encased a diatom, the streaming protoplasm of a radiolarian, or the transparent tissues of a pteropod. Nothing is wasted in the sea; every particle of material is used over and over again, first by one creature, then by another.

A hard, brilliant, coruscating phosphorescence often illuminates the summer sea. In waters where the protozoa Noctiluca is abundant it is the chief source of this summer luminescence, causing fishes, squids, or dolphins to fill the water with racing flames and to clothe themselves in a ghostly radiance. Or again the summer sea may glitter with a thousand thousand moving pinpricks of light, like an immense swarm of fireflies moving through a dark wood. Such an effect is produced by a shoal of the brilliantly phosphorescent shrimp Meganyctiphanes, a creature of cold and darkness and of the places where icy water rolls upward from the depths and bubbles with white ripplings at the surface.

Autumn comes to the sea with a fresh blaze of phosphorescence, when every wave crest is aflame. Here and there the whole surface may glow with sheets of cold fire, while below schools of fish pour through the water like molten metal. Often the autumnal phosphorescence is caused by a fall flowering of the dinoflagellates, multiplying furiously in a short-lived repetition of their vernal blooming.

Charles Darwin stood on the deck of the Beagle as she plowed southward through the Atlantic off the coast of Brazil. The sea from its extreme luminousness presented a wonderful and most beautiful appearance [he wrote in his diary]. Every part of the water which by day is seen as foam, glowed with a pale light. The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus, and in her wake was a milky train. As far as the eye reached the crest of every wave was bright; and from the reflected light, the sky just above the horizon was not so utterly dark as the rest of the Heavens. It was impossible to behold this plain of matter, as it were melted and consuming by heat, without being reminded of Milton’s description of the regions of Chaos and Anarchy.*

So, too, the lifelessness, the hopelessness, the despair of the winter sea are an illusion. Everywhere are the assurances that the cycle has come to the full, containing the means of its own renewal.

Because of this virtual immortality, the oldest oceanic mountains must be infinitely older than any of the ranges left on land. Professor Hess, who discovered the sea mounts of the central Pacific, suggested that these ‘drowned ancient islands’ may have been formed before the Cambrian period, or somewhere between 500 million and 1 billion years ago. This would make them perhaps of an age with the continental mountains of the Laurentian upheaval. But the sea mounts have changed little if at all, comparing in elevation with modern terrestrial peaks like the Jungfrau, Mt. Etna, or Mt. Hood; while of the mountains of the Laurentian period scarcely a trace remains.

The Pacific sea mounts, according to this theory, must have been of substantial age when the Appalachians were thrust up, 200 million years ago; they stood almost unchanged while the Appalachians wore down to mere wrinkles on the earth’s face. The sea mounts were old, 60 million years ago, when the Alps and the Himalayas, the Rockies and the Andes, rose to their majestic heights. Yet it is probable that they will be standing unchanged in the deep sea when these, too, shall have crumbled away to dust.

A deep and tremulous Earth-Poetry. LLEWELYN POWYS

For the sediments are the materials of the most stupendous ‘snowfall’ the earth has ever seen. It began when the first rains fell on the barren rocks and set in motion the forces of erosion. It was accelerated when living creatures developed in the surface waters and the discarded little shells of lime or silica that had encased them in life began to drift downward to the bottom.

Silently, endlessly, with the deliberation of earth processes that can afford to be slow because they have so much time for completion, the accumulation of the sediments has proceeded. So little in a year, or in a human lifetime, but so enormous an amount in the life of earth and sea.

The rains, the eroding away of the earth, the rush of sediment-laden waters have continued, with varying pulse and tempo, throughout all of geologic time.
In addition to the silt load of every river that finds its way to the sea, there are other materials that compose the sediments. Volcanic dust, blown perhaps half way around the earth in the upper atmosphere, comes eventually to rest on the...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.

Sands from coastal deserts are carried seaward on offshore winds, fall to the sea, and sink. Gravel, pebbles, small boulders, and shells are carried by icebergs and drift ice, to be released to the water when the ice melts. Fragments of iron, nickel, and o...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.

The sediments are a sort of epic poem of the earth. When we are wise enough, perhaps we can read in them all of past history. For all is written here. In the nature of the materials that compose them and in the arrangement of their successive layers the sediments reflect all that has happened in the waters above them and on the surrounding lands. The dramatic and the catastrophic in earth history have left their trace in the sediments—the outpourings of volcanoes, the advance and retreat of the ice, the searing aridity of desert lands, the sweeping destruction of floods.

We might have expected the amount to be vast, if we thought back through the ages of gentle, unending fall—one sand grain at a time, one fragile shell after another, here a shark’s tooth, there a meteorite fragment—but the whole continuing persistently, relentlessly, endlessly.
The heavy falls correspond to the periods of mountain building on the continents, when the lands are lifted high and the rain rushes down their slopes, carrying mud and rock fragments to the sea; the light falls mark the lulls between the mountain-building periods, when the continents are flat and erosion is slowed.
And again, on our imaginary tundra, the winds blow the snow into deep drifts, filling in all the valleys between the ridges, piling the snow up and up until the contours of the land are obliterated, but scouring the ridges clear.

So deliberate, so unhurried, so inexorable are the ways of nature that the stocking of an island may require thousands or millions of years. It may be that no more than half a dozen times in all these eons does a particular form, such as a tortoise, make a successful landing upon its shores.

If the rise over the continent of North America should amount to a hundred feet (and there is more than enough water now frozen in land ice to provide such a rise) most of the Atlantic seaboard, with its cities and towns, would be submerged. The surf would break against the foothills of the Appalachians. The coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico would lie under water; the lower part of the Mississippi Valley would be submerged.
If, however, the rise should be as much as 600 feet, large areas in the eastern half of the continent would disappear under the waters. The Appalachians would become a chain of mountainous islands. The Gulf of Mexico would creep north, finally meeting in mid-continent with the flood that had entered from the Atlantic into the Great Lakes, through the valley of the St. Lawrence. Much of northern Canada would be covered by water from the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay.

The mobility of the earth’s crust is inseparably linked with the changing relations of sea and land—the warping upward or downward of that surprisingly plastic substance which forms the outer covering of our earth.

Some of our Stone Age ancestors must have known the rigors of life near the glaciers. While men as well as plants and animals moved southward before the ice, some must have remained within sight and sound of the great frozen wall. To these the world was a place of storm and blizzard...But those who lived half the earth away, on some sunny coast of the Indian Ocean, walked and hunted on dry land over which the sea, only recently, had rolled deeply. These men knew nothing of the distant glaciers.

Furthermore, the water that composes a wave does not advance with it across the sea; each water particle describes a circular or elliptical orbit with the passage of the wave form, but returns very nearly to its original position. But to return to our typical wave, born of wind and water far out in the Atlantic, grown to its full height on the energy of the winds, with its fellow waves forming a confused, irregular pattern known as a ‘sea.’ As the waves gradually pass out of the storm area their height diminishes, the distance between successive crests increases, and the ‘sea’ becomes a ‘swell.’

A hail storm will knock down a rough sea, and even a sudden downpour of rain may often turn the surface of the ocean to oiled-silk smoothness, rippling to the passage of the swells.

A long series of reports culled from the publications of engineers and ships’ officers show that waves higher than 25 feet from trough to crest are rare in all oceans.
Storm waves may grow twice as high, and if a full gale blows long enough in one direction to have a fetch of 600 to 800 miles, the resulting waves may be even higher. The greatest possible height of storm waves at sea is a much debated question, with most textbooks citing a conservative 60 feet, and mariners stubbornly describing much higher waves.

If thought of in the time-honored conception of a ‘river’ in the sea, The Gulf Stream’s width from bank to bank is 95 miles. It is a mile deep from surface to river bed. It flows with a velocity of nearly three knots and its volume is that of several hundred Mississippis.

THERE IS NO DROP of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide.

The tides present a striking paradox, and the essence of it is this: the force that sets them in motion is cosmic, lying wholly outside the earth and presumably acting impartially on all parts of the globe, but the nature of the tide at any particular place is a local matter, with astonishing differences occurring within a very short geographic distance.

But when the earth was only a few million years old, assuming that the deep ocean basins were then formed, the sweep of the tides must have been beyond all comprehension. Twice each day, the fury of the incoming waters would inundate all the margins of the continents.

But over the millions of years the moon has receded, driven away by the friction of the tides it creates.

The very movement of the water over the bed of the ocean, over the shallow edges of the continents, and over the inland seas carries within itself the power that is slowly destroying the tides, for tidal friction is gradually slowing down the rotation of the earth. Our day is believed to be several seconds longer than that of Babylonian times.

TO THE ANCIENT GREEKS the ocean was an endless stream that flowed forever around the border of the world, ceaselessly turning upon itself like a wheel, the end of earth, the beginning of heaven. This ocean was boundless; it was infinite.

So far as historical records are concerned, the first great voyage of marine exploration was by Pytheas of Massilia about 330 B.C. Unfortunately
The location of ‘Thule’ is a point much disputed by later authorities, some believing it to have been Iceland, while others believe that Pytheas crossed the North Sea to Norway. Not for about 1200 years after Pytheas do we have another clear account of marine exploration—this time by the Norwegian Ottar. This voyage was probably made between A.D. 870 and 890.

The shipbuilding and seamanship of the Norwegians mark a new epoch in the history both of navigation and discovery, and with their voyages the knowledge of northern lands and waters was at once completely changed. They had neither compass, nor astronomical instruments, nor any of the appliances of our time Lloyd Brown, in his Story of Maps, says that no true mariners’ chart of the first thousand years after Christ has been preserved or is definitely known to have existed...early mariners carefully guarded the secrets of how they made their passages from place to place; that sea charts were ‘keys to empire’ and a ‘way to wealth’ and as such were secret, hidden documents.

So here and there, in a few out-of-the-way places, the darkness of antiquity still lingers over the surface of the waters. In its broader meaning, that other concept of the ancients remains. For the sea lies all about us. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it.

The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations,the dead husks of that same life. For all at last return to the sea— to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.

[Els · Rating 4 out of 5]

De zee. Door: Rachel Carson.

Carson kent u ongetwijfeld van haar revolutionaire boek Silent Spring (1962). Een boek dat ik nog niet las (misschien kan Athenaeum een heruitgave uitbrengen?) maar waar ik al 100-den keren van hoorde of naar zag verwijzen. 60 jaar na datum is dit boek nog altijd relevant, jammer genoeg. De wereld, de natuur is er in die tijd niet op vooruit gegaan, integendeel zelfs.

Hetzelfde geldt voor De zee. Geschreven in 1950 en heruitgebracht in 1961. Rachel Carson is mariene bioloog, toch leest dit boek ook vlot voor niet-biologen, zoals ik. Hoewel de wetenschap (net zoals de vernietiging en vervuiling van de zee) er afgelopen decennia op vooruit is gegaan, blijft De zee een must read.

Ik heb zoveel bijgeleerd, nu denkt u misschien dat dat aan mij ligt (dat kan) maar geloof me: ook u gaat enorm veel bijleren. De zee is niet zo maar een bodem zand met daarop veel water. Er zijn ook bergen en kloven, wat vroeger zee was is nu soms aarde en omgekeerd, dieren die aan land kwamen keerden terug naar de zee. Alles hangt met alles samen, het water beïnvloedt ons leven op het land zo veel meer dan de meeste mensen weten. Ik heb vaak met open mond zitten lezen; verbaasd over de schoonheid, ingenieusiteit, kracht, diversiteit van wat wij gemakshalve allemaal de zee noemen.

Ik was al ‘fan’ van de zee, met een zee-tattoo op mijn been. Maar nu is mijn bewondering, liefde en kennis veel groter. Allemaal dankzij een bioloog die (jammer genoeg veel te vroeg) in 1964 gestorven is. Haar nalatenschap is indrukwekkend. En hoewel er veel te weinig met gedaan is, hoop ik dat er door de uitgave van deze editie een paar mensen, met de nodige macht én lef, eindelijk werk gaan maken van de bescherming van dit wonderlijke water. Laten we redden wat er nog te redden valt. Dit boek is urgent!