The Edge of the Sea

by Rachel Carson

  Below the low water of neaps are the areas exposed only as the rhythmic swing of the tides falls lower and lower, approaching the level of the springs. Of all the intertidal zone this region is linked most closely with the sea. Many of its inhabitants are offshore forms, able to live here only because of the briefness and infrequency of exposure to the air.

  The relation between the tides and the zones of life is clear, but in many less obvious ways animals have adjusted their activities to the tidal rhythm. Some seem to be a mechanical matter of utilizing the movement of water. The larval oyster, for example, uses the flow of the tides to carry it into areas favorable for its attachment. Adult oysters live in bays or sounds or river estuaries rather than in water of full oceanic salinity, and so it is to the advantage of the race for the dispersal of the young stages to take place in a direction away from the open sea. When first hatched the larvae drift passively, the tidal currents carrying them now toward the sea, now toward the headwaters of estuaries or bays. In many estuaries the ebb tide runs longer than the flood, having the added push and volume of stream discharge behind it, and the resulting seaward drift over the whole two-week period of larval life would carry the young oysters many miles to sea. A sharp change of behavior sets in, however, as the larvae grow older. They now drop to the bottom while the tide ebbs, avoiding the seaward drift of water, but with the return of the flood they rise into the currents that are pressing upstream, and so are carried into regions of lower salinity that are favorable for their adult life.

  Others adjust the rhythm of spawning to protect their young from the danger of being carried into unsuitable waters. One of the tube-building worms living in or near the tidal zone follows a pattern that avoids the strong movements of the spring tides. It releases its larvae into the sea every fortnight on the neap tides, when the water movements are relatively sluggish; the young worms, which have a very brief swimming stage, then have a good chance of remaining within the most favorable zone of the shore.

  There are other tidal effects, mysterious and intangible. Sometimes spawning is synchronized with the tides in a way that suggests response to change of pressure or to the difference between still and flowing water. A primitive mollusk called the chiton spawns in Bermuda when the low tide occurs early in the morning, with the return flow of water setting in just after sunrise. As soon as the chitons are covered with water they shed their spawn. One of the Japanese nereid worms spawns only on the strongest tides of the year, near the new- and full-moon tides of October and November, presumably stirred in some obscure way by the amplitude of the water movements.

  Many other animals, belonging to quite unrelated groups throughout the whole range of sea life, spawn according to a definitely fixed rhythm that may coincide with the full moon or the new moon or its quarters, but whether the effect is produced by the altered pressure of the tides or the changing light of the moon is by no means clear. For example, there is a sea urchin in Tortugas that spawns on the night of the full moon, and apparently only then. Whatever the stimulus may be, all the individuals of the species respond to it, assuring the simultaneous release of immense numbers of reproductive cells. On the coast of England one of the hydroids, an animal of plant-like appearance that produces tiny medusae or jellyfish, releases these medusae during the moon's third quarter. At Woods Hole on the Massachusetts coast a clamlike mollusk spawns heavily between the full and the new moon but avoids the first quarter. And a nereid worm at Naples gathers in its nuptial swarms during the quarters of the moon but never when the moon is new or full; a related worm at Woods Hole shows no such correlation although exposed to the same moon and to stronger tides.

  In none of these examples can we be sure whether the animal is responding to the tides or, as the tides themselves do, to the influence of the moon. With plants, however, the situation is different, and here and there we find scientific confirmation of the ancient and world-wide belief in the effect of moonlight on vegetation. Various bits of evidence suggest that the rapid multiplication of diatoms and other members of the plant plankton is related to the phases of the moon. Certain algae in river plankton reach the peak of their abundance at the full moon. One of the brown seaweeds on the coast of North Carolina releases its reproductive cells only on the full moon, and similar behavior has been reported for other seaweeds in Japan and other parts of the world. These responses are generally explained as the effect of varying intensities of polarized light on protoplasm.

  Other observations suggest some connection between plants and the reproduction and growth of animals. Rapidly maturing herring collect around the edge of concentrations of plant plankton, although the fully adult herring may avoid them. Spawning adults, eggs, and young of various other marine creatures are reported to occur more often in dense phytoplankton than in sparse patches. In significant experiments, a Japanese scientist discovered he could induce oysters to spawn with an extract obtained from sea lettuce. The same seaweed produces a substance that influences growth and multiplication of diatoms, and is itself stimulated by water taken from the vicinity of a heavy growth of rockweeds.

  The whole subject of the presence in sea water of the so-called "ectocrines" (external secretions or products of metabolism) has so recently become one of the frontiers of science that actual information is fragmentary and tantalizing. It appears, however, that we may be on the verge of solving some of. the riddles that have plagued men's minds for centuries. Though the subject lies in the misty borderlands of advancing knowledge, almost everything that in the past has been taken for granted, as well as problems considered insoluble, bear renewed thought in the light of the discovery of these substances.

  In the sea there are mysterious comings and goings, both in space and time: the movements of migratory species, the strange phenomenon of succession by which, in one and the same area, one species appears in profusion, flourishes for a time, and then dies out, only to have its place taken by another and then another, like actors in a pageant passing before our eyes. And there are other mysteries. The phenomenon of "red tides" has been known from early days, recurring again and again down to the present time—a phenomenon in which the sea becomes discolored because of the extraordinary multiplication of some minute form, often a dinoflagellate, and in which there are disastrous side effects in the shape of mass mortalities among fish and some of the invertebrates. Then there is the problem of curious and seemingly erratic movements of fish, into or away from certain areas, often with sharp economic consequences. When the so-called "Atlantic water" floods the south coast of England, herring become abundant within the range of the Plymouth fisheries, certain characteristic plankton animals occur in profusion, and certain species of invertebrates flourish in the intertidal zone. When, however, this water mass is replaced by Channel water, the cast of characters undergoes many changes.

  In the discovery of the biological role played by the sea water and all it contains, we may be about to reach an understanding of these old mysteries. For it is now clear that in the sea nothing lives to itself. The very water is altered, in its chemical nature and in its capacity for influencing life processes, by the fact that certain forms have lived within it and have passed on to it new substances capable of inducing far-reaching effects. So the present is linked with past and future, and each living thing with all that surrounds it.

  The Rocky Shores

  WHEN THE TIDE is high on a rocky shore, when its brimming fullness creeps up almost to the bayberry and the junipers where they come down from the land, one might easily suppose that nothing at all lived in or on or under these waters of the sea's edge. For nothing is visible. Nothing except here and there a little group of herring gulls, for at high tide the gulls rest on ledges of rock, dry above the surf and the spray, and they tuck their yellow bills under their feathers and doze away the hours of the rising water. Then all the creatures of the tidal rocks are hidden from view, but the gulls know what is there, and they know that in time the water will fall away again and giv
e them entrance to the strip between the tide lines.

  When the tide is rising the shore is a place of unrest, with the surge leaping high over jutting rocks and running in lacy cascades of foam over the landward side of massive boulders. But on the ebb it is more peaceful, for then the waves do not have behind them the push of the inward pressing tides. There is no particular drama about the turn of the tide, but presently a zone of wetness shows on the gray rock slopes, and offshore the incoming swells begin to swirl and break over hidden ledges. Soon the rocks that the high tide had concealed rise into view and glisten with the wetness left on them by the receding water.

  Small, dingy snails move about over rocks that are slippery with the growth of infinitesimal green plants; the snails scraping, scraping, scraping to find food before the surf returns.

  Like drifts of old snow no longer white, the barnacles come into view; they blanket rocks and old spars wedged into rock crevices, and their sharp cones are sprinkled over empty mussel shells and lobster-pot buoys and the hard stipes of deep-water seaweeds, all mingled in the flotsam of the tide.

  Meadows of brown rockweeds appear on the gently sloping rocks of the shore as the tide imperceptibly ebbs. Smaller patches of green weed, stringy as mermaids' hair, begin to turn white and crinkly where the sun has dried them.

  Now the gulls, that lately rested on the higher ledges, pace with grave intentness along the walls of rock, and they probe under the hanging curtains of weed to find crabs and sea urchins.

  In the low places little pools and gutters are left where the water trickles and gurgles and cascades in miniature waterfalls, and many of the dark caverns between and under the rocks are floored with still mirrors holding the reflections of delicate creatures that shun the light and avoid the shock of waves—the cream-colored flowers of the small anemones and the pink fingers of soft coral, pendent from the rocky ceiling.

  In the calm world of the deeper rock pools, now undisturbed by the tumult of incoming waves, crabs sidle along the walls, their claws busily touching, feeling, exploring for bits of food. The pools are gardens of color composed of the delicate green and ocher-yellow of encrusting sponge, the pale pink of hydroids that stand like clusters of fragile spring flowers, the bronze and electric-blue gleams of the Irish moss, the old-rose beauty of the coralline algae.

  And over it all there is the smell of low tide, compounded of the faint, pervasive smell of worms and snails and jellyfish and crabs—the sulphur smell of sponge, the iodine smell of rockweed, and the salt smell of the rime that glitters on the sun-dried rocks.

  One of my own favorite approaches to a rocky seacoast is by a rough path through an evergreen forest that has its own peculiar enchantment. It is usually an early morning tide that takes me along that forest path, so that the light is still pale and fog drifts in from the sea beyond. It is almost a ghost forest, for among the living spruce and balsam are many dead trees-some still erect, some sagging earthward, some lying on the floor of the forest. All the trees, the living and the dead, are clothed with green and silver crusts of lichens. Tufts of the bearded lichen or old man's beard hang from the branches like bits of sea mist tangled there. Green woodland mosses and a yielding carpet of reindeer moss cover the ground. In the quiet of that place even the voice of the surf is reduced to a whispered echo and the sounds of the forest are but the ghosts of sound—the faint sighing of evergreen needles in the moving air; the creaks and heavier groans of half-fallen trees resting against their neighbors and rubbing bark against bark; the light rattling fall of a dead branch broken under the feet of a squirrel and sent bouncing and ricocheting earthward.

  But finally the path emerges from the dimness of the deeper forest and comes to a place where the sound of surf rises above the forest sounds—the hollow boom of the sea, rhythmic and insistent, striking against the rocks, falling away, rising again.

  Up and down the coast the line of the forest is drawn sharp and clean on the edge of a seascape of surf and sky and rocks. The softness of sea fog blurs the contours of the rocks; gray water and gray mists merge offshore in a dim and vaporous world that might be a world of creation, stirring with new life.

  The sense of newness is more than illusion born of the early morning light and the fog, for this is in very fact a young coast. It was only yesterday in the life of the earth that the sea came in as the coast subsided, filling the valleys and rising about the slopes of the hills, creating these rugged shores where rocks rise out of the sea and evergreen forests come down to the coastal rocks. Once this shore was like the ancient land to the south, where the nature of the coast has changed little during the millions of years since the sea and the wind and the rain created its sands and shaped them into dune and beach and offshore bar and shoal. The northern coast, too, had its flat coastal plain bordered by wide beaches of sand. Behind these lay a landscape of rocky hills alternating with valleys that had been worn by streams and deepened and sculptured by glaciers. The hills were formed of gneiss and other crystalline rocks resistant to erosion; the lowlands had been created in beds of weaker rocks like sandstones, shale, and marl.

  Then the scene changed. From a point somewhere in the vicinity of Long Island the flexible crust of the earth tilted downward under the burden of a vast glacier. The regions we know as eastern Maine and Nova Scotia were pressed down into the earth, some areas being carried as much as 1200 feet beneath the sea. All of the northern coastal plain was drowned. Some of its more elevated parts are now offshore shoals, the fishing banks off the New England and Canadian coasts—Georges, Browns, Quereau, the Grand Bank. None of it remains above the sea except here and there a high and isolated hill, like the present island of Monhegan, which in ancient times must have stood above the coastal plain as a bold monadnock.

  Where the mountainous ridges and the valleys lay at an angle to the coast, the sea ran far up between the hills and occupied the valleys. This was the origin of the deeply indented and exceedingly irregular coast that is characteristic of much of Maine. The long narrow estuaries of the Kennebec, the Sheepscot, the Damariscotta and many other rivers run inland a score of miles. These salt-water rivers, now arms of the sea, are the drowned valleys in which grass and trees grew in a geologic yesterday. The rocky, forested ridges between them probably looked much as they do today. Offshore, chains of islands jut out obliquely into the sea, one beyond another—half-submerged ridges of the former land mass.

  But where the shore line is parallel to the massive ridges of rock the coast line is smoother, with few indentations. The rains of earlier centuries cut only short valleys into the flanks of the granite hills, and so when the sea rose there were created only a few short, broad bays instead of long winding ones. Such a coast occurs typically in southern Nova Scotia, and also may be seen in the Cape Ann region of Massachusetts, where the belts of resistant rock curve eastward along the coast. On such a coast, islands, where they occur, lie parallel to the shore line instead of putting boldly out to sea.

  As geologic events are reckoned, all this happened rather rapidly and suddenly, with no time for gradual adjustment of the landscape; also it happened quite recently, the present relation of land and sea being achieved perhaps no more than ten thousand years ago. In the chronology of Earth, a few thousand years are as nothing, and in so brief a time the waves have prevailed little against the hard rocks that the great ice sheet scraped clean of loose rock and ancient soil, and so have scarcely marked out the deep notches that in time they will cut in the cliffs.

  For the most part, the ruggedness of this coast is the ruggedness of the hills themselves. There are none of the wave-cut stacks and arches that distinguish older coasts or coasts of softer rock. In a few, exceptional places the work of the waves may be seen. The south shore of Mount Desert Island is exposed to heavy pounding by surf; there the waves have cut out Anemone Cave and are working at Thunder Hole to batter through the roof of the small cave into which the surf roars at high tide.

  In places the sea washes the foot of
a steep cliff produced by the shearing effect of earth pressure along fault lines. Cliffs on Mount Desert—Schooner Head, Great Head, and Otter-tower a hundred feet or more above the sea. Such imposing structures might be taken for wave-cut cliffs if one did not know the geologic history of the region.

  On the coasts of Cape Breton Island and New Brunswick the situation is very different and examples of advanced marine erosion occur on every hand. Here the sea is in contact with weak rock lowlands formed in the Carboniferous period. These shores have little resistance to the erosive power of the waves, and the soft sandstone and conglomerate rocks are being cut back at an annual rate averaging five or six inches, or in some places several feet. Marine stacks, caves, chimneys, and archways are common features of these shores.

  Here and there on the predominantly rocky coast of northern New England there are small beaches of sand, pebbles, or cobblestones. These have a varied origin. Some came from glacial debris that covered the rocky surface when the land tilted and the sea came in. Boulders and pebbles often are carried in from deeper water offshore by seaweeds that have gripped them firmly with their "holdfasts." Storm waves then dislodge weed and stone and cast them on the shore. Even without the aid of weeds, waves carry in a considerable volume of sand, gravel, shell fragments, and even boulders. These occasional sandy or pebbly beaches are almost always in protected, incurving shores or dead-end coves, where the waves can deposit debris but from which they cannot easily remove it.

  When, on those coastal rocks between the serrate line of spruces and the surf, the morning mists conceal the lighthouses and fishing boats and all other reminders of man, they also blur the sense of time and one might easily imagine that the sea came in only yesterday to create this particular line of coast. Yet the creatures that inhabit the intertidal rocks have had time to establish themselves here, replacing the fauna of the beaches of sand and mud that probably bordered the older coast. Out of the same sea that rose over the northern coast of New England, drowning the coastal plain and coming to rest against the hard uplands, the larvae of the rock dwellers came—the blindly searching larvae that drift in the ocean currents ready to colonize whatever suitable land may lie in their path or to die, if no such landfall is their lot.