SPRING COMES TO THE OCEAN

Starting with a hermit crab off the coast of Florida warmed into desperate house hunting activity by the gradually increasing heat of the springtime sunshine, the talented author follows the coastline all around the United States to show what else is new under the sea at that time of year. From her descriptions of the brainless sponges, whose working parts are strangers to each other, to the irritably anxious approach to motherhood brought by the octopus off California, the reader is given an excellent introduction to the extremes and complexities of marine life. "Lobsters click, currents boom... small fish make popping noises..." and it's all going on in the same season—courtship, mating, hatching and migration, with porpoises in a ballet of love off New York, oysters taking a gamble in reproduction off Connecticut, and a wonderful story about whales off the Northern Pacific coast. The book stands out in both literary and scientific terms and makes an excellent companion to the junior edition of Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. The author has captured and conveyed a sense of the simultaneity of ocean life and the awesome variety of its creatures.