Carson's second book, The Sea Around Us, was a biography of the ocean. It was unlike any other book at the time. Today we know so much about the ocean, but in the late 1940s when Carson was writing, average people knew very little about it. Carson made the ocean come to life. Using the most current scientific information, she poetically described places and creatures that most people had never seen or even imagined. Carson hoped The Sea Around Us would "be read and enjoyed by everyone who has ever seen [the ocean] or who has felt its fascination even before standing on its shores."