The special mystery and beauty of the sea is the setting for Rachel Carson's memorable portrait of the sea birds and sea creatures that inhabit the eastern coasts of North America. In a sequence of riveting adventures along the shore, within the open sea, and down in the twilight depths, Rachel Carson introduces us to the winds and currents of the ocean as revealed in the lives of Scomber the mackerel and Anguilla the eel. Life for them is a continuous miracle, a series of life-and-death victories played out among strange and often terrifying life forms far below the surface of the sea.

Under the Sea Wind is a classic wilderness adventure to which all nature writing is compared. The hero of Under the Sea Wind is soon seen to be life itself, that quicksilver prize granted, for a brief time only, to the clever and the fortunate.