"The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place..." Thus the author of The Sea Around Us opens the door on another world of teeming life where the sea meets the land. "Each time I enter this world," writes Rachel Carson, "I gain some new awareness of its beauty and deeper meanings.

The variety of shore life is rich and complex, its patterns go back half a billion years, when the ancestors of our sponges and jellyfish, snails and crabs flourished in the Cambrian seas. The same great forces are still at work; the tides in their eternal rhythms, the waves, the ocean currents. In this book we see how these forces shape the living creatures that depend upon them. And so a mysterious universe becomes intelligible, though the essential mystery remains.

The Edge of the Sea is divided into three main sections: The Rocky Shore, The Rim of Sand, The Coral Coast. These environments are found the world over. But because of its configuration and geologic history, the American Atlantic coast demonstrates their life patterns "almost with the clarity of a well-conceived scientific experiment."

North of Cape Cod is a largely rocky coastline where life in the broad band between high and low watermark is everywhere visible: a colorful tapestry of seaweeds, barnacles, mussels, and snails clinging firmly to the rocks. From Cape Cod southward stretch the great beaches of sand constantly stirred by the waves, giving little foothold on the surface, driving out of sight the millions of creatures that make their homes there: the clams and the whelks, the horseshoe crabs, the moon snails and sand dollars, the microscopic animals that swim in the film of water around each grain of wet sand. Finally, there is the typical coral coast off Florida, where strong ocean currents bring in strange tropical fauna; where flourish pipe fish, dainty sea horses, and huge conches.

This book has a double purpose. It endeavors, through words and pictures, to lead the reader into an unknown world; to catch the evanescent beauty of a tide pool and tell the story of a grain of sand. It is a book to be read at any time or place. But it is also a practical guide to identification to take with you to the shore; the superb, scientifically accurate drawings by Bob Hines enables the reader to identify many plants and animals at a glance.

From the dust jacket