The Sea

Synopsis

Comprises the trilogy The Sea Around Us , Under the Sea-Wind and The Edge of the Sea . In the first book the author presents an overview of the subject, a natural history of the oceans. The work summarizes the knowledge contributed by geophysicists, oceanographers, and workers in a host of other disciplines regarding the sea around us. The author discusses such matters as the origin of the seas, the evolution of life, the vast canyons and mountain ridges at the bottom of the sea, the deposition of sedimentary rocks, the creation of volcanic islands, tides, waves, currents, minerals, fisheries, and the history of sea exploration. Under the Sea-Wind gives an imaginative evocation of the lives of various creatures who dwell in or by the sea: most notably a migrating sanderling and a shoreward-running mackerel. The final book looks at the marginal zone of the shore, and the wealth of life to be found there, on rocky coast, sandy beach, mudflat, and coral reef.