Publishing the Southwest

Dedicated to the Western Flyer Foundation

It has been 80 years since John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts sailed aboard the Western Flyer into the Sea of Cortez—a voyage that changed both of their lives and forever altered the arc of environmentalism and marine biology in North America. The contributors to this volume were inspired by their reflections on that voyage and those two remarkable individuals. A sublime attribute of the voyage and the book it spawned was the seamless blending of art, science, and philosophy. I thank Andrea Dingeldein for the use of her wonderful drawing, which captures the essence of the Ed Ricketts/John Steinbeck relationship and graces the cover of this special issue (see more of her work at www.thelocalnaturalist.com).

The expedition and the book, and so much that was later influenced by that amalgamation of ideas, also inspired creation of the Western Flyer Foundation, committed to restoring the purse seiner that Steinbeck and Ricketts chartered for their famous 1940 expedition. The boat is being fully restored and will soon be back in the water. This volume of Journal of the Southwest is dedicated to that foundation and its goal of cross-disciplinary learning that will be core to the educational mission of the restored Western Flyer (www.westernflyer.org). This compilation of essays offers another blend of art, philosophy, and science, influenced by the unique mélange that took place between two people and a boat 80 years ago.

My review of the Steinbeck-Ricketts 1940 expedition, with an annotated cruise log and species list, seemed long overdue. Hopefully it will provide grist for the mills of other scientists and writers in the years ahead.

Lindsey Haskin and I explore the influence of Steinbeck and others on Ricketts’s thinking during his intellectual growth as a scientist. We walk readers through some of the steps in Ricketts’s personal and professional life that helped shape the most influential, enduring, nondegreed marine biologist and invertebrate zoologist that America has ever seen.

Don Kohrs’s essay on Ed Ricketts’s life up to the 1940 Sea of Cortez expedition is illuminating and carefully researched. It includes his childhood years, the founding of Pacific Biological Laboratories, and the writing/publishing of Between Pacific Tides.

Kevin Bailey and Chris Chase explore the long and not-always illustrious history of the Western Flyer, the boat that wouldn’t die. The Flyer had a life of her own, and she became an unexpected, deeply personal symbol of science, adventure, freedom, and camaraderie—eventually taking her place in American history. From sardine and salmon seiner, to bottom trawler, to Alaskan crab fisher, to private and government research vessel, the boat sank twice but is now being faithfully restored by the Western Flyer Foundation.

Katharine Rodger explores Ricketts’s influence on Steinbeck’s writing, giving the topic a new twist by examining the former’s influence on how Steinbeck wrote. Rodger explores Ricketts’s belief that only when one has mastered the form or craftsmanship of their art—be it poetry, prose, painting, music, or science—can the content or truth of that art be executed with purity. It would seem that both Steinbeck and Ricketts attained that aspiration in their unique creativity.

“Got Squid,” a look at the long-term oceanography of the Sea of Cortez through the lens of Humboldt squid, a species not recorded by the Steinbeck-Ricketts expedition, is historical-ecological science at its best. W. F. Gilly and colleagues carefully analyze the history of Humboldt squid records and physical oceanography of the Gulf, coming to intriguing conclusions.

Susan Shillinglaw considers the meaning of Steinbeck and Ricketts’s holistic approach and how that is reflected in their book, most pointedly in their admonition that we should look “from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.” She examines the significance of “participation” in the intertidal region and the implication of breaking through, a concept vital to both men’s thinking.

Richard McCourt and Josie Iselin provide a delightful look at the “other” Sea of Cortez expedition in 1940, that...