The Edge of the Sea is a best-selling book by the American marine biologist Rachel Carson, first published as a whole by Houghton Mifflin in 1955.

[2] While working for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, she had the idea of creating a field guide of the Atlantic seashore.

Within The Edge of the Sea, Carson details her explorations with accounts of a tide pool, an inaccessible cave, and the instance of a lone crab on the shore at midnight.

Aided by a Guggenheim Fellowship, Carson's research leading up to The Edge of the Sea was produced by the exploration of the rocky coast of New England, the sandy shores of the Mid-Atlantic, and the coral shores of the Southern Atlantic.

[1] Each area is described by Carson with immense detail, working to provide people with a glimpse of nature at its core.