The Sea Around Us

Summary: A survey of what is known about the oceans-- including their beginnings, the dynamics of currents, tides and waves, the topography of the oceans, the life within, and our own relationship with this dominant feature of our planet.

Rachel Carson is probably best known for her book Silent Spring (reviewed here) on the environmental impacts of pesticides, notably DDT, that led to its eventual banning. However, it was The Sea Around Us, published eleven years earlier that brought Carson to national attention as a science writer. It sold over a million copies, won a National Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller.

Oceans cover 71 percent of the earth's surface and account for 97 percent of the water on the planet. At points, show more oceans covered much of North America between the Appalachians and the Rockies and have left their traces to this day. Carson tells the story of oceans, mixing the latest scientific data available to her with a lyrical account of this most salient feature of our planet. Consider this passage about sedimentation:

"When I think of the floor of the deep sea, the single, overwhelming fact that possesses my imagination is the accumulation of sediments. I see the steady, unremitting, downward drift of materials from above, flake upon flake, layer upon layer--a drift that has continued for hundreds of millions of years, that will go on as long as there are seas and continents.

"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."

With her writing, what sounds like a dull subject, sedimentation, takes on wonder as it is likened to an unremitting snowfall. It is a skill we see over and over in her work as she takes facts and explains them in a way that captures the imagination.

The Sea Around Us introduces us to oceanography from its account of the beginnings of the oceans on a cooling planet to the inhabitants of the seas on the ocean surface and in the dark depths (I found her discussion of squid, and their ubiquity especially fascinating). She explores the seasonal cycles of life, the topography of the ocean floor, the formation of volcanic islands (and their disappearances), and the evidence of historic rises and falls of the oceans, which in the past, and likely in the future, will inundate much of North America, as well as other coastal and low areas around the world. Even when she wrote, oceans were rising and glacial melts were in process, but in her time this was still seen as merely a cyclical occurrence, unrelated to human causes. Whatever you think about these things, one thing she makes clear--significant areas where humans make a home will be under water some day. The only questions are "how soon?" and "how will we prepare for that day?"

She explores the movements of the oceans, from wave actions to tidal patterns to the vast sea currents that circulate around the globe. The final part of her work considers the impacts of the oceans on our lives, from providing us life-giving salt to functioning as the earth's thermostat (she emphasizes the incredible heat storage capacities of the ocean and how significant a one degree rise in ocean temperature can be), and finally our human quest to sail, circumnavigate, and explore the depths of the sea.

Those who associate Carson with environmental activism will be surprised at the lack of advocacy in this book. What one encounters instead is description that captures the imagination and awakens us to the wonder that surrounds us. And perhaps this is as vital as any advocacy, because we must first love and deeply care for that for which we advocate. Carson opens our eyes to the wonder of what we might sometimes take for granted and deepens the love many of us have for the sight and sound of waves, the smell of sea air, the delight we take in the creatures of the deep and the awe we have of the power of "the sea around us." show less

24. The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson
reader: Kaiulani Lee
OPD: 1951
format: 9:09 audible audiobook (the original edition is 230 pages)
acquired: from Audible included listened: Mar 14 – Apr 8
rating: 5
genre/style: Nature theme: Random audio
locations: the oceans
about the author: 1907 –1964, born on a family farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania. Carson was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose influential book Silent Spring (1962) and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

A time-capsule gem. A 1951 overview of what was known about the oceans - the sea life, the tides, bathymetry, geology (before plate tectonics!), ocean currents, weather, sediments and salt and oil show more exploration, and human history. She looks into warming oceans, rising sea levels and how all this effects the weather (all without any knowledge of CO2-driven climate change). It's biology, geology, climate, all wrapped together with the knowledge of that time. And it's elegantly written. Terrific.

I was mixed on her first book, [Under the Sea Wind], despite its poetic writing (and exceptional reader). I was much more fully taken in this time.

2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/348551#8115255 show less

I was born on an island and have lived my whole life by the sea. I love the waves, and the many moods of the ocean. I love the mystery of it, even while the deep sea frightens me. It is so deep, dark and unknown. I find sea creatures both alluring and terrifying--an alien life-form. I'm ashamed at how little I really know about the sea. I didn't want to read a textbook, but I also didn't want just a superficial meditation on how interesting the ocean was. Rachel Carson's book, "The Sea Around Us," is fascinating and the perfect fit for me. I'm sure there are many more contemporary books on this subject (this book was published in the '50s), but her name drew me to this book. After all, her "Silent Spring" (a book I have not yet read), show more has linked her name with environmentalism forever. Her writing style is both precise and enchanting. She tells a story that fascinates with wonder and astounds us with her knowledge. I recommend this book for its topic, for the amazing amount of information it contains in only 200 or so pages, and for Carson's gift of bringing science and passion together in her writing. show less

Carson is so lyrical in her writing. Beauty on the page. When reading The Sea Around Us I could practically smell the salt air, feel the sea rise and fall under my feet. Her words lulled me like the ocean always does. In addition, Carson writes in such a straight forward manner you are never caught up in textbook language. You are never bored. Entertained as you learn. She is not above calling something she doesn't understand just plain "weird." The one drawback? Some of the material is out of date. When Carson describes the diving helmets of the 1950s I wondered what she would think of today's technology. Another mystery of her time was how whales and fur seals could endure the pressure changes in the depths of the ocean. Science has show more since uncovered that mystery and thensome. show less

Rachel Carson's short but detail-packed 1951 book covers many different aspects of human knowledge about the world's oceans, from their history and geography and life, to their tides and currents, to commercial prospects for extracting minerals from seawater.

I can't exactly recommend it as a source of good information for modern readers, just because it is, of course, very dated. Actually, the version I have is a revised edition published in 1961, featuring a preface and a number of footnotes offering updated information, and it is truly astonishing to me just how much scientific discovery on the subject there was in those ten years, no doubt due in large part to the International Geophysical Year that fell during that interval. There show more has, of course, also been a great deal since, not that our knowledge of the oceans is anywhere near exhaustive still. It is also strangely fascinating to contemplate the things that the book acknowledges but doesn't realize the importance of, like the already-rising sea levels.

Dated or not, though, I certainly did find it worth reading, not just as an interesting snapshot of mid-20th-century science, but also as the classic example of science writing that it is, and especially for the way that Carson balances scientific precision with some very evocative prose. show less

Although some of the material in Carson's classic work is undeniably dated, particularly around technology and what portions of the sea have yet to be explored, as well as climate change, her careful prose and descriptions still make for an incredibly worthwhile exploration of the oceans and their history. Where textbooks often make the subject of oceanography something of a static-feeling subject, Carson manages to treat the ocean as a near living, breathing organism that affects everyone on our planet, and the calmness of the exploration as a whole makes for a book I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.

1951 was the year when a science book became a best seller. The Sea Around us spent 86 weeks on the New York Times best seller list. Rachel Carson was a marine biologist and therefore a scientist who discovered that she had the talent to write for a popular audience and although her book is packed with scientific information, it also waxes lyrical about the sights, sounds and feel of the sea both above and below the surface. A book written by a lover of sea and seascapes for an audience who want to know more about the 70 percent of the world in which they might paddle, swim, or travel over, but have never thought much about it. This is the opening to her chapter "The Long Snowfall"

'Every part of earth or air or sea has an atmosphere show more peculiarly its own, a quality or characteristic that sets it apart from all other. When I think of the floor of the deep sea, the single, overwhelming fact that possesses my imagination is the accumulation of sediments'

Sediments! A chapter about sediments? Sediments are usually very important for people with a scientific bent, but Carson with her image of a long snowfall and a chapter that eases her readers through some scientific information manages to make her sediments, mysterious, beautiful and thoroughly absorbing. Right now writing this I have a picture of the flakes of a snow storm falling, falling, one by one, out there on the ocean floor.

The book is more interested in geology, oceanography, meteorology the more physical elements of the oceans rather than individual species of animals that inhabit the sea. It is a book about the environment, but written before Carson made a reputation for being an environmentalist and so doom laden warnings come to us as feint echos in what is a celebration of the wonders of nature. There are chapters on the teeming surface of the oceans and the black sunless depths, There are chapters on the birth of Islands, the hidden lands beneath the sea, The destructive power of the sea and the science of the waves, and finally exploration and exploitation by mankind.

Carson became prominent in the conservation of the environment movement with the publication of Silent Spring in 1962; a book that highlighted the dangers of synthetic pesticides. In the Sea Around Us she talks about climate change, and a warming of the sea, but comes down on the side of cyclic changes in oceanic circulation, therefore a natural phenomenon rather than man made. This is somewhat surprising with the knowledge that we have today of greenhouse gasses and environmental pollution, but one must remember that her book was published in 1951. She wrote a preface to the 1961 edition, but her concern then was the dumping of atomic waste. She died in 1964 a considerable time before concerns were raised on an international level about global warming and mankind's involvement in that process. This is not a book that will supply an up to date scientific story on the latest developments in the world of oceanography a lot has happened since the 1961 edition and some of them have thrown Carsons ideas on the ocean basins as being older than the continents into disrepute: for example the theory of plate tectonics has established that the creation of the sea bed in geological terms is relatively more recent.

I read the Oxford University press 2003 edition which is billed as an Illustrated Commemorative Edition with glossy photographs and a coffee table book feel. There is an introduction and forward which puts Carson's book in context and an afterword by Brian J Skinner a professor of Geology as well as some notes throughout the text that point out scientific developments since the original publication back in 1951. Today we might read Rachel Carsons The Sea Around us for her innovations in producing a science based book that captures some of the poetry of the sea, but it also still provides much basic information. I learn't quite a bit and enjoyed the learning and so a 4.5 star read. show less