first published in weblog twenty three on Monday 23rd January 2006

Twenty years ago I wrote an essay entitled Green Houses or Blue Moon Waves in which I discussed the work of the marine scientist Otto Pettersson. My sole source was a book first published in 1950 entitled The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson. My manuscript remains unpublished but I included the Otto Pettersson section in The Art of Fine Publishing which I posted onto my website last year.

However Otto Pettersson's work remains unknown buried with the object of his research at the bottom of the Skaggerak. A year ago I did a Google search which confirmed his obscurity and prompted me to write away to Oslo University for more information about the gentleman and his work. Today’s search came back with 415 references to this great scientist. And my comments were right up there on the top page in fifth position.

The background to this tale is that while browsing in the Ashford County Library I chanced across a Rachel Carson book published in 1968 by MacGibbon & Kee entitled The Sea. The book was a 3-in-1 reprint of The Sea Around Us, Under the Sea-Wind written in 1941 and The Edge of the Sea published in 1955.

Under the Sea-Wind was not a success. It enjoyed excellent reviews but few readers. But then ten years later in 1951 came The Sea Around Us and instant success. Between one spring tide and the next Rachel Carson was world-famous and being showered with honours. The book remained high on the best-seller lists for eighty-six weeks and was translated into thirty languages.

There were two interesting side-effects. Firstly Under the Sea-Wind was reprinted in America and published for the first time in Britain. But for the triumph of The Sea Around Us this remarkable book would have remained gathering dust in the basements of a few American public libraries. Secondly her success brought Rachel Carson the financial independence essential for the research and writing of Silent Spring...and about this book the introduction to The Sea had this to say:

'There can be few literate people who have not heard of Rachel Carson. Her last book Silent Spring sounded a tocsin round the world prompting governments in many countries to restrict the use of pesticides. It has been given to few women, other than the mistresses of emperors and kings, so to influence governments. It has been given to no other woman to do so through the medium of a book.'

more from Shepherd on Climate