Beebe, William. Half Mile Down. New York, Harcourt Brace, 1934. 344 . pp. Stands alone as a vivid eyewitness account of the sea half a mile below the surface.
Brown, Lloyd A. The Story of Maps. Boston, Little, Brown, 1940. 397 pp. Contains, especially in the chapter, The Haven Finding Art, much of interest about early voyages.
Challenger Staff. Report on the Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H. M. S. Challenger, 1873—76. 40 vols. See especially volume 1, parts 1 and 2—Narrative of the Cruise—which gives an interesting account of this historic expedition. Consult in libraries.
Cousteau, Jacques-Yves and Frederic Dumas. The Silent World. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1953. 288 pp. A fascinating book in which the reader shares Cousteau’s long and remarkable experience undersea.
Darwin, Charles. The Diary of the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle. Edited from the manuscript by Nora Barlow. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1934. 451 pp. A fresh and charming account, as Darwin actually set it down in the course of the Beagle voyage.
Dugan, James. Man Under the Sea. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1956. 332 pp. An interesting and useful account of man’s explorations undersea during the past 5000 years.
Heyerdahl, Thor. Kon-Tiki. Chicago, Rand McNally & Co., 1950. 304 pp. The Odyssey of six modern Vikings who crossed the Pacific on a primitive raft—one of the great books of the sea.
History of Earth and Sea
Brooks, C. E. P. Climate Through the Ages. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1949. 395 pp. Interprets clearly and readably the climatic changes of past ages. Out of print.
Coleman, A. P. Ice Ages, Recent and Ancient. New York, Macmillan 1926. 296 pp. An account of Pleistocene glaciation, and also of earlier glacial epochs. Out of print.
Daly, Reginald. The Changing World of the Ice Age. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1934. 271 pp. A fresh, stimulating, and vigorous treatment of the subject, more easily read, however, against some background of geology. Out of print.
Our Mobile Earth. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926. 342 pp. For the general reader; an excellent picture of the earth’s continuing development. Out of print.
Hussy, Russell C. Historical Geology: The Geological History of North America. New York and London, McGraw-Hill, 1947. 465 pp. Out of print.
Miller, William J. An Introduction to Historical Geology, with Special Reference to North America. New York, D. Van Nostrand Co., 6th Ed. 1952. 499 pp.
Schuchert, Charles, and Dunbar, Carl O. Outlines of Historical Geology. New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1941. 291 pp. Any one of these three books will give the general reader a good conception of this fascinating subject; the treatment by the various authors differs enough that all may be read with profit.
Shepard, Francis P. Submarine Geology. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1948. 348 pp. The first textbook in a field which is still in the pioneering stages.
Outstanding Sea Prose
These books are listed because each, in one way or another, captures the sea’s varied and always changing moods; all are among my own favorite volumes.
Beston, Henry. The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. New York, Rinehart and Company, 1949. 222 pp.
Conrad, Joseph. The Mirror of the Sea. New York, Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1960. 304 pp. (Combined with Conrad’s A Personal Record.)
Hughes, Richard. In Hazard. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1938. 279 pp. (also published by Penguin Books, 1943).
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Available in many editions, as Modern Library, New American Library, Pocket Books.
Nordhoff, Charles, and Hall, James Norman. Men Against the Sea. Boston, Little, Brown, 1934. 251 pp. (also published by Pocket Books, 1946).
Tomlinson, H. M. The Sea and the Jungle. New York, Modern Library, 1928. 332 pp. Paper: Dutton (Everyman).
These books provide further details about the topics discussed in the Afterword.
Sea Floor Spreading
Kennett, J. Marine Geology. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1982. An excellent textbook introducing the student to a vast subject.
Scientific American. Ocean Science. San Francisco, W. H. Freeman, 1977. A book of readings about the ocean for the educated layman.
The Global Thermostat
Dansgaard, W., J. W. C. White, and S. J. Johnsen. The abrupt termination of the Younger Dryas climate event. Nature v. 339, 1989, pp. 532–5. A short technical account of the rapidity of climatic change at the end of the last glacial age.
Houghton, R. A. and G. M. Woodwell. Global climatic change. Scientific American. v. 260, 1989, pp. 36–44. An account of the significance of the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation to world climate.
Imbrie, John, and Katherine Palmer Imbrie. Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery. Short Hills, Enslow Publishers, 1979. An historical account of the astronomical theories of the ice ages.
Jones, P. D., T. M. L. Wigley, and P. B. Wright. Global temperature variations between 1861 and 1984. Nature v. 322, 1986, pp. 430–434. A technical account of global warming over the last century.
Extinctions
Stanley, S. M. Extinction. New York: Freeman, 1987.
Migrations and Larval Transport
Childress, R. J. and M. Trim. Pacific Salmon. University of Washington Press, 1979. A beautifully illustrated popular description of the migrations and general biology of the Pacific salmon.
Harden Jones, F. R. Fish Migration. London: Edward Arnold, 1968.
Strathman, R. R. Feeding and nonfeeding larval development and life-history evolution in marine invertebrates. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, v. 16, 1985, pp. 339–361. An excellent technical account of the nature of marine invertebrate larval development and dispersal.
Coral Reefs
Birkeland, C. The Faustian traits of the crown-of-thorns starfish. American Scientist, volume 77, 1989, pp. 154–163.
Levinton, J. S. 1982. Marine Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1982. Chapters 20 and 21 cover the biology of coral reefs.
* Many of the old basic works on the sea are now out of print but they are well worth pursuing in libraries for the excellent background they provide.
Acknowledgments
TO COPE ALONE and unaided with a subject so vast, so complex, and so infinitely mysterious as the sea would be a task not only cheerless but impossible, and I have not attempted it. Instead, on every hand I have been given the most friendly and generous help by those whose work is the foundation and substance of our present knowledge of the sea. Specialists on many problems of the ocean have read chapters dealing with their fields of study and have made comments and suggestions based on their broad understanding. For such constructive help I am indebted to Henry B. Bigelow, Charles F. Brooks, and Henry C. Stetson of Harvard University; Martin W. Johnson, Walter H. Munk, and Francis P. Shepard of the Scrips Institution of Oceanography; Robert Cushman Murphy and Albert Eide Parr of the American Museum of Natural History; Carl O. Dunbar of Yale University; H. A. Marmer of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey; R. C. Hussey of the University of Michigan; George Cohee of the U.S. Geological Survey; and Hilary B. Moore of the University of Miami.
Many others have cheerfully gone to great trouble to help locate elusive documents, have sent me unpublished information and comments, and in many other ways have lightened my task. Among these are H. U. Sverdrup of the Norsk Polarinstitutt in Oslo; L. H. W. Cooper of the Laboratory at Plymouth; Thor Heyerdahl of Oslo; J. W. Christensen, Jens Eggvin, and Gunnar Rollefsen of the Fiskeridirektoratets Havforskingsinstitutt in Bergen; H. Blegvad, Secretary General of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea; Hans Pettersson of the Oceanografiska Institutet in Göteborg; and, in the United States, John Putnam Marble of the National Research Council; Richard Fleming of the Hydrographic Office; Daniel Merriman of the Bingham Oceanographic Laboratory; Edward H. Smith of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; W. N. Bradley and H. S. Ladd of the U.S. Geological Survey; Maurice Ewing of Columbia University; and F. R. Fosberg of
George Washington University.
The front end paper is reproduced from a portion of the map, Il Mare di Amazones, by permission of the New York Public Library.
The library resources of many Government and private institutions have been placed freely at my disposal, and my special thanks are due Ida K. Johnson, Reference Librarian of the Interior Department Library, whose tireless researches and thorough knowledge of the available literature have been unfailingly helpful.
My absorption in the mystery and meaning of the sea have been stimulated and the writing of this book aided by the friendship and encouragement of William Beebe.
The leisure to write the book and the means of carrying on some of the studies that contributed to it were in large part made possible by the award of the Eugene F. Saxton Memorial Fellowship.
Silver Spring, Maryland R. L. C.
January 1951
A Biography of Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) was one of the most influential American nature writers of the twentieth century. She wrote four critically acclaimed books, as well as articles and pamphlets on conservation and natural resources. Grounded in the scientific discoveries of the day, Carson’s works were notable for their intimate lyric prose that appealed to everyday Americans. She is considered one of the first environmentalists and popularized new ideas and words to describe man’s relationship to the earth, such as ecology, food chain, biosphere, and ecosystem.
Born in the rural town of Springdale, Pennsylvania, near the Allegheny River, Carson spent much of her childhood roaming her family’s sixty-five-acre farm and exploring the woods around her home. Her lifelong love of nature, encouraged by her mother, was coupled with a passion for writing, and her first published piece appeared in the popular children’s publication St. Nicholas when she was ten years old.
Carson pursued writing at the Pennsylvania College for Women (now called Chatham University) but switched her focus to biology before graduating in 1925. After studying at the esteemed Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts and receiving a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932, Carson joined the U.S. Bureau of Fish and Wildlife Service, where she worked for fifteen years as a scientist, editor, and editor-in-chief of the bureau’s publications. When she was named junior aquatic biologist in 1936, she was one of only two female professionals at the bureau.
Carson began writing natural history articles for the Baltimore Sun and other papers during the Depression and was encouraged to transform her scientific articles and pamphlets into general-interest pieces. In 1941 she published her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, which tells the story of the sea creatures and birds that dwell in and along North America’s eastern coast. In 1951 she published The Sea Around Us—about the ecosystems within and surrounding the world’s oceans—which captured the imaginations of readers around the world. The book became a cultural phenomenon and was named an outstanding book of the year by the New York Times, won a National Book Award and John Burroughs Award, and inspired an Academy Award–winning documentary of the same name. The book has sold more than one million copies and has been translated into twenty-eight languages. With this success, Carson left the Fish and Wildlife Service to become a fulltime writer, and in 1955 she published a follow-up to her bestseller, called The Edge of the Sea.
A year after publishing The Edge of the Sea, Carson adopted the orphaned son of one of her nieces. Stories of her outdoor adventures with Roger would become the touchstones of her essay in Woman’s Home Companion magazine, “Help Your Child to Wonder,” which was published posthumously as the illustrated The Sense of Wonder (1965).
But it was Carson’s fourth book, Silent Spring (1962), that would again catapult her into the limelight. In this book Carson challenged the widespread, conventional use of many chemical pesticides, including DDT, citing the long-term effects on marine and animal life. Silent Spring provoked an outcry of concern, as well as criticism from the chemical industry, government, and media. However, shortly after publication, her findings were accepted by the Science Advisory Committee under President John F. Kennedy. In 1970 President Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, and two years later the use of DDT was banned. The publication of Silent Spring has been credited with sparking the environmental movement in the United States and continues to inspire readers today.
Rachel Carson died in 1965 from breast cancer. She was fifty-seven years old. In 1969 the Fish and Wildlife Service named the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, near Carson’s home in Maine, in her honor.
Rachel Carson as a young girl. She said that one of her earliest childhood memories was of her love for books and reading. (Image: Carson Archives.)
Carson with her pet dog. She described herself as a “solitary girl,” who was always happiest with “wild birds and creatures as companions.” (Image: Carson Archives.)
By the time she graduated high school, Carson had become known for her meticulousness and intelligence. (Image: Carson Archives.)
A letter from the senior editor of Reader’s Digest declining an article Carson had written titled “Ace of Nature’s Aviators,” which advocated for rehabilitating the common starling bird. The letter, dated January 2, 1945, commended the piece and lamented the magazine’s lack of space in which to print it. She sold a condensed version of the article to Coronet in 1945 while she was in need of money following an emergency appendectomy. (Image: Carson Archives.)
A letter from Carson to Raymond J. Brown, editor of Outdoor Life, written in 1946 after she was named a finalist in the magazine’s writing competition. In the letter, Carson declares that “conservation is not an academic question for debate, but something that vitally and immediately concerns my whole way of life.” (Image: Carson Archives.)
Carson at her typewriter. She brought together a rare passion for writing with a detailed understanding of science. (Image: Brooks.)
Carson writing on a dock. She expressed her love for nature first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. (Image: Edwin Gray.)
Carson later in her life. Her message of living in harmony with the natural world still resonates today. (Image: Carson Archives.)
A handwritten manuscript page from an early draft of The Sense of Wonder, which was published posthumously in 1965. (Image: Carson Archives.)
Images courtesy of Rachel Carson Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
The editors of the following magazines have kindly given permission to reproduce material which originally appeared in the pages of their periodicals: Atlantic Naturalist, Nature Magazine, The New Yorker, Science Digest, and The Yale Review.
copyright © 1950, 1951, 1961 by Rachel L. Carson, renewed 1979 by Roger Christie
cover design by Jim Tierney
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1476-3
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Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
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