Menu

Skip to content
  • Home|
  • About|
  • Participate|
  • Social Directory|

The Well:

MBL News from the Source

You are here: Home / Poet of the Sea, 1940s–1950s | The Scientist Magazine

Poet of the Sea, 1940s–1950s | The Scientist Magazine

Published on November 1, 2019
Poet of the Sea, 1940s–1950s | The Scientist Magazine
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Pin on Pinterest
Pinterest
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
 By Ashley Yeager

The sea, Rachel Carson once wrote, is the “great mother of life.” Most know Carson for Silent Spring, an environmental manifesto that accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation on pesticides. The book, published in 1962, contributed to the initiation of a federal ban on the use of the synthetic organic compound DDT, and to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency. But long before Carson’s carefully crafted prose helped to push the environmental movement forward, she introduced readers to the wonders of the sea.

To write Under the Sea-Wind, her first book, Carson lay on the beaches of Beaufort, North Carolina, and “felt the waves, listened to the birds, and imagined what was going on,” says Robert Musil, the president and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council, the legacy organization Carson envisioned before her death to carry on her environmental advocacy work. “She walked around at night with a flashlight and looked at the ghost crabs and became deeply involved with these creatures.” In the book, Carson follows a few of the animals—a mackerel, a pair of small shorebirds, and an eel—in their salty worlds.

For him, Musil says, the enduring appeal of Carson’s writing comes from her insight that “if you can’t identify with something, somebody, a species, or a people who are different than yourself, you’re inclined to destroy it.”

This ethic of environmental empathy was first instilled in Carson as she grew up outside of Pittsburgh, learning from her mother to listen to and identify the songs of birds and appreciate the wonder of the natural world. Carson made her first foray into writing at age eight with a story about two wrens searching for a house. She later enrolled at Pennsylvania College for Women, now Chatham University, to study English. A biology course taught by Mary Scott Skinker led Carson to a summer research position at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, where she combed the shore during the day, and at night peered into the water to watch what came to life under the moonlight. Read more…

Rachel Carson and Bob Hines, an artist who illustrated “The Edge of the Sea,” collect specimens of life from the surf in the Florida Keys in 1955.
Credit: Rachel Carson Council, Rex Gary Schmidt

Source: Poet of the Sea, 1940s–1950s | The Scientist Magazine

Posted in MBL in the News | Tagged via bookmarklet

Post navigation

← Getting the Microbe Story, Straight From the Mouth|Knowable Magazine Deep Carbon, Deep Insights into Research Funding | AGU Blogosphere →

MBL in the News

  • Coral Reef Sprouting on Cape Cod | WBSM New Bedford
  • Model Organisms on Roads Less Traveled | Nature Methods
  • White House Appoints MBL Alumna Jane Lubchenco to Key Climate Science Position
  • REU Student at MBL is Third Author on Paper Receiving National Attention | Ripon Press
  • Octopuses, Like People, Seem To Have Active Stages Of Sleep, May Dream | NPR
  • What to Expect When You’re Expecting… A Signal from Space | CTV W5
  • U.S. Global Change Research Should Focus on Preparing for the Worst | National Academies
  • One of the World’s Most Venomous Animals Is a Snail | The Atlantic
  • Clever Cuttlefish Show Advanced Self-Control, Like Chimps and Crows | The Conversation
  • Scientists Reveal a Precise Structure in a Fabled Worm’s Tangled Brain | STAT
Archived Posts

Subscribe to the Well

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts.

Copyright © 2021 Marine Biological Laboratory