Remembering the Gulf

Motivation

Context

“We know we must go back if we live and we don’t know why” p. 126

Curiosity

Expedition

We made a trip into the Gulf; sometimes we dignified it by calling it an expedition

Method

"Even our boat hurried us, and while the Sea-Cow would not run, it had nevertheless infected us with the idea of its running."

Pace

“We had time to play and talk, and even to drink a little beer…”

"We took 2160 individuals of species of beer"

Ecology

“The night was extremely dark when we rounded the end…The Coast Pilot spoke of a light on the end of San Lucas pier, but we could see no light.” p. 50

“the exposed rocks…were ferocious with life”

Development

Disease

Collection

“not only have the vermetids been neglected as intertidal organisms but…they may prove to be much more significant than we have realized when means for properly identifying them are made available.” - Keen 1960

Food webs

“the swordfish in great numbers jumped and played about us” p. 183

“we dropped the fishing lines and immediately hooked several hammer-head sharks and a large red snapper” p.156

Overfishing

“The sea bottom must have been scraped completely clean” p. 248

“there is a great pile of decaying hammer-head sharks, the livers torn out and the fish left to rot”

“And it is not true that a species thus attacked comes back. The disturbed balance often gives a new species ascendancy and destroys forever the old relationship” p. 249

The jumbo squid is taken only during certain years when water conditions are favorable. For example, during the summer of 1934, jumbo squid, which had been scarce for many years, suddenly appeared in appreciable numbers in southern California waters….

California Fish Bulletin 49 (1935)

“It is distributed in the eastern tropical

Pacific…occasionally as far as Monterey, CA,

but does not usually occur farther north …

than mid-Baja, CA. This periodic anomalous

extension is a result of El Nino-Southern

Oscillation events.”

J.H. Wormuth (1998)

Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 536

Climate change

Philosophy

"If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time. Then ecology has a synonym which is ALL" - p.85

Holism

“We could not yet relate the microcosm of the Gulf with the macrocosm of the sea” p. 269

“We determined to go doubly open so that in the end we could, if we wished, describe the sierra thus: ‘D.XVII-15-IX; A.II-15-IX,’ but also we could see the fish alive and swimming, feel it plunge against the lines, drag it threshing over the rail, and even finally eat it. And there is no reason why either approach should be inaccurate”

"Non-teleological thinking concerns itself primarily not with what should be, or could be, or might be, but rather with what actually "is"--attempting at most to answer the already sufficiently difficult questions what or how, instead of why."

Non-teleological thinking

“We have a book to write about the Gulf of California. We could do one of several things about it’s design. But we have decided to let it form itself: its boundaries a boat and a sea; its duration a six weeks’ charter time; its subject everything we could see and think and even imagine; its limits—our own without reservation. We made a trip into the Gulf; sometimes we dignified it by calling it an expedition.”

Story telling

“Despite the negative connotations of the term ‘story-telling’, we suggest that the story-telling step in scientific investigation… is in fact ubiquitous but too often taken for granted.”

“… the creative story-telling step in the scientific process is a necessary part of embracing complexity.”

-Gardner et al. 2007 TREE

"Trying to remember the Gulf is like trying to recreate a dream"

science “is a continual and recursive process of story testing”

- Grobstein, P. 2005. Revisiting science in culture: science as story telling and story revising. Journal of Research Practice

Historical comparisons

Motivation

Skill

Techniques

Honesty

"When you collect marine animals there are certain flatworms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book - to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.”

"In a way, ours is the older method, somewhat like that of Darwin on the Beagle. He was called a "naturalist"...We came to envy this Darwin on his sailing ship. He had so much room and so much time...It was the pace that made the difference. And in the writing of Darwin, as in his thinking, there is the slow heave of a sailing ship, and the patience of waiting for a tide." p. 60

Remembering the Gulf

Historical Ecology & Non-teleological thought

Rafe Sagarin rafe@email.arizona.edu

Beer

Coastal development

Emerging diseases

Common property regimes

Loss of top predators

Loss of large organisms

Climate change

“…the fish were many. We could see the splashing of great schools of tuna in the distance where they beat the water to spray in their millions” p.154

“The beach was beautiful with the pink and white shells of the murex...Sparky found them so beautiful that he collected a washtub full of them” p. 185

“It was simple to pick up hundreds at a time in black, twisting, squirming knots” p.92

“…great many of the huge stalked-eyed conchs” p. 262

“we saw literally millions of these cucumbers.” p.91

Vermetid gastropods of several species and genera make a conspicuous zonation band at most sites in the lower Gulf of California - Keen 1960

“…great numbers of mantas… sometimes 12 ft between the wing tips”

From 12 common sites

“a great number of giant snails, of which we collected many hundreds” p.234

...ferocious with life