‘Doc’ Ricketts on marine biology

Not long ago I was on a Marin tidal shore looking at anemones, starfish and other marine life so abundant in pools left in these surf-swept rocks. Rocky-shore animals are easy to find and frequently spectacular. You find them best by turning over small rocks by hand and lifting big ones with a bar. I remember “Doc” Ricketts’ advice, in his classic “Between Pacific Tides.” It is highly important, Ricketts cautioned, that the collector, in the interests of conservation, replace carefully all such rocks in their depressions; otherwise many of the delicate bottom animals are exposed to fatal drying, sunlight or wave action.

“Between Pacific Tides,” by Edward F. Ricketts and Jack Calvin, first appeared in 1939 and became one of the great works in the field of marine biology. But it was also a book amateur tidal pool-watchers could read and understand. I am happy to see that a third edition, revised by Joel W. Hedgpeth, director of the Pacific Marine Station at Dillon Beach, has been issued by Stanford University Press.

This is an encyclopedic account of the habits and habitats of some 500 of the common seashore invertebrates of the Pacific Coast. John Steinbeck, in the original foreword, put it this way:

“This book of Ricketts and Calvin ... says in effect: look at the animals, this is what we seem to know about them but the knowledge is not final, and the clear eye and sharp intelligence may see something we have never seen. These things, it says, you will see, but you may see much more. This is a book for laymen, for beginners, and, as such, its main purpose is to stimulate curiosity, not to answer final questions, which are only temporarily answerable.”

“Doc” Ricketts and Steinbeck were close friends and wine drinking companions in Monterey in the 1930s. Steinbeck used “Doc” freely as a model in the novel “Cannery Row.” Ricketts was a superb “natural” naturalist. His education in zoology was informal and haphazard, Dr. Hedgpeth tells us. He came to the Coast from Illinois in 1923 as a partner in a biological supply business, but kept prodding the tidal pools, his avocation. He and Steinbeck wrote “The Sea of Cortez” (1941), the result of extensive travels and research in the Gulf of California.

“Doc” Ricketts died in 1948 as the result of a crazy accident in which his car was struck by the Del Monte Express almost directly in front of his Cannery Row laboratory.

It is good to know that “Between Pacific Tides,” updated, is in print. I refer to my copy frequently and urge other amateur seashore invertebrat-ewatchers to do likewise.

This column originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle July 18, 1962.

“Doc” Ricketts and Steinbeck were close friends and wine drinking companions in Monterey in the 1930s. Steinbeck used “Doc” freely as a model in the novel “Cannery Row.”