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conveyed a sense of the vulnerability of the underwater world to destructive human

activities.

Rachel Carson, best known for her catalysing book Silent Spring, which

inspired environmental movements of the 1960s, was a marine biologist who wrote

several popular books on the subject. Significant texts include the Sea Around Us,

published in 1951 and then later reissued as Under the Wind Sea (1952) and The Edge

of the Sea (1955). These books form a sea trilogy through which Carson poetically

and scientifically describes life in the ocean. Unlike Silent Spring, these texts do not

have an overt environmental agenda. However, Carson is clearly attempting to instil a

sense of awe about nature and respect for her profession. She captures something of

the excitement and wonder that the ocean stirred in her when she recounts the story of

the very first oceanic exploration. The first ship equipped for oceanic exploration, the

Challenger, set out from the shores of England in 1872 to trace a course across the

globe:

From bottoms lying under miles of water, from silent depths carpeted with
red clay ooze, and from all the lightless intermediate depths, net-haul after
net-haul of strange and fantastic creatures came up and were spilled onto
the decks. Pouring over the weird beings thus brought up for the first time
into light of day, beings no man had ever seen before, the Challenger
scientists realised that life existed even on the deepest floor of the abyss.
(Carson 1951, pp. 55-56)

Marine researcher, inventor, ocean explorer, conservationist and filmmaker

Jacques Cousteau was another figure who participated in the development of marine

sciences and conservation. His life work coincided with and helped to develop

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conservation and sustainability ideas within marine sciences through the 20 century.

In his first underwater film in 1942 Par 18 Metres de Fond (18 Metres Deep) we see

Cousteau’s initial experimentations with underwater filming (dir. Cousteau 1942). In

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