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The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck is the story of a group of men on a journey through the Gulf of California with the plan to study the marine organisms that lived there, but they ended up studying a lot more. As the book was written by a writer and not a scientist the scientific side is seen through a different angle. Amongst all of the stops to collect specimens are thrown Steinbeck's tangents about the ideas of the world, the way that people behave, and philosophical ideas.
Throughout the journey of the Western Flyer the company made many stops along the coast of the Baja peninsula and along mainland Mexico. At each one of these stops Steinbeck tells of the collecting and the names of the different organisms along with the environments that they lived in. Steinbeck does a careful job of describing the animals and plants and using their scientific names in order to make the book useful for scientific purposes.
The journey also contains many stops in the towns and cities that border the Gulf. At each one of these stops Steinbeck gives a detailed account of their experience and a description of the people and their culture. One feels like he is actually traveling through Mexico and meeting the people while reading the book.
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This book is about a small crew of men, most of which are scientists. They rent a boat and set sail off the coast of California. They travel all over the sea on the coast of California and Mexico, in the Sea of Cortez. The point of this voyage is not for mere joy, it is for collecting, observing, and preserving species that inhabit the sea. The focus on the interdial zone for the most part.
This book documents the journey and all the adventures that take place. One of my favorite quotes from the book is " the reports of Biologists are the measure, not of science, but of the men themselves". These men took the time to log everything that they did. They were meticulous in their gathering, and studying.
This book is not just about the species they collected. It is about the men and the things they learned along the journey. They learned to slow down and actually look at life. They were able to ponder all kinds of life, theirs and those of land and sea. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about themselves and the adventures that can occur while doing research.
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This nonfiction book is an account of a research/specimen collecting trip Steinbeck made with his friend and marine biologist Edward Ricketts off the coast of Baja California in 1940. They rent a boat, a purse-seiner called the "Western Flyer," stock her with supplies, hire a crew, and set sail on the afternoon of March 11, 1940.
The raison d'etre of the trip is collecting sea specimens, but Steinbeck is interested in more than just recording scientific data. The men go ashore at various ports along the way, and encounters with other men are related (in one, the inspiration for what later became THE PEARL is told). Both Ricketts and Steinbeck have a philosophical bent, and they discuss in detail teleological vs. nonteleological ways of interpreting the world. Likewise, ecology and their theory that everything in nature has its place and makes a contribution to the whole world system is examined. Both men enjoy drinking, and that becomes a topic of conversation at one point. It's plain from Steinbeck's writing that they are having a good time in addition to the successful collecting. At one stop, at which they are given an icy welcome, they believe they've come amongst gun smugglers. The trip comes to a happy end on April 13 as they head for Monterey Bay and home.
The books initial publication coincided with the attack on Pearl Harbor and was virtually forgotten. Only recently have critics studied the book carefully, especially in terms of what it has to say about the environment. Regardless of that, the book is entertaining and informative. His prose is at times lyrical, at other times outright funny (after talking to other boat captains over the radio about how much fish was caught, he says after they found out they were on a collecting mission the other boats paid no attention to them: "We were obviously ridiculous"). Included is Steinbeck's lengthy and lively biographical portrait of Ricketts, who was killed in a train accident. Worth checking out.
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This book represents the log of a voyage Steinbeck took with Ed Ricketts collecting biological specimens from the Sea of Cortez during the spring of 1940. The goal of the trip was to document the variety of sea creatures that lived in the tidal pools of the region, as well as to bring back specimens for identification and further study. In total, the voyage lasted about 4 weeks, during which time Ricketts, Steinbeck, and the rest of the crew documented hundreds of species, thousands of specimens, and discovered several new creatures that had not been known before.
The book begins with a lengthy preface introducing readers to Ed "Doc" Ricketts. Ricketts, of course, was the mythical Doc featured in the Steinbeck classics "Cannery Row" and "Sweet Thursday". In this biography of Ricketts, Steinbeck provides some of the details of Rickett's life, and describes his chief character traits as Steinbeck perceived them.
By today's standards, their approach and attitudes towards the animals they were catching seem rather appalling. In the tidal pools, it seemed they grabbed everything that moved, as well as everything that didn't move but merely showed some signs of life. In this manner, they collected rare as well as common species. The ship's crew enjoyed the sport of catching a sea turtle, shooting a shark through its fin, and harpooning giant rays. Modern readers can at least take comfort in the thought that society has advanced to the point that such behavior is no longer found acceptable on a biological expedition. Even Steinbeck, however, was shocked by the methods used on a Japanese shrimp trawler that they encountered dredging in Mexican waters. The Japanese, with full permission from the Mexican government, were literally dredging the ocean floor, bringing up every last living thing, from sea fans to sharks in their nets. Whatever wasn't shrimp they threw back, where injured or dead, it was reduced to seagull food. Steinbeck noted the short-sightedness of this approach, how it left nothing behind for future generations, no shrimp, but also no other fish.
In the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, CA, there is an exhibit with photographs of the expedition. In the center of one of the photographs is Carol Steinbeck, John's first wife, who was a crew member on this voyage, but who John managed to expunge completely from this written record. Nevertheless, he leaves us with a clue to her existence at the end of chapter 24, where he writes of a strong prejudice when there is a woman along on a voyage of scientific exploration, "the wife of one of the members of the party. She is never called by her name or referred to as an equal....She is nearly always a stringy blonde with leathery skin who is included in all photographs to give them `interest.'" Clearly, this account of the voyage is carefully crafted not to tell exactly what happened and to whom, but to represent the events as John chose to tell them. Most of the prose explores Steinbeck's and Rickett's concept of non-teleological thinking, where they take an idea and push its consequences beyond reasonable limits. Still, Steinbeck does provide a narrative account of the various collection stops they made, and what kinds of creatures predominated at each stop (this description was based on Rickett's notes). At the end of the book are a glossary of biological terms used and an index.
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John Steinbeck was not merely a lusty untrained amateur when it came to marine biology - he studied the subject at Stanford although left without graduating. Nevertheless, the Log from the Sea of Cortez, the narrative portion of the account from his 1940 journey round the Gulf of California with his scientist friend Ed Ricketts, is written in the tone of the intellegent novice to the subject.
The prose is light-footed and brisk, covering the minutiae of collecting - minature sea life is chronicled with detailed affection, then frequently the observations of creatures are used as a basis for expanding into a panoramic commentary on sociology, ethics, religion, psychology, teleology - you name it. Watching two crayfish meet, Steinbeck observes that they fight. He then speculates that they will only lose this genetic impulse if some future mutation is undergone by the species. He wonders if this might be the case with humans, explaining why war is an inevitable component of our psychic. How much of this is verifiable scientifically is questionable, but this doesn't stop Steinbeck's account from being an entertaining travelogue. Potted tales of his fellow crew wittily intersperse the log from the collecting fields, such as the tale of one member trying to decapitate a turtle that crawls around headless on the deck, post execution.
What really enriches this account, however, is Steinbeck's obvious enthusiasm for biology, human company, sea life and, more broadly, life at sea in general. At one point, having returned to the ocean after a spell in the mountains, he confesses 'One who was born by the ocean or has associated with it cannot ever be quite content away from it for very long'. There is certainly something of the keenness of the short trousered schoolboy, ecsctatically rummaging around the rockpools that spills over to the reader.
Yet, for all its happy moments, the Sea of Cortez sits in historical contex against a rather more sombre, tragic background. The beginnings of war starting in Europe are far removed from Steinbeck and co.'s potterings in the Gulf of California, but the occasional allusion to war in the account reminds us that this was an uneasy time for American life. And Steinbeck's lifelong friend and colleague on this trip, the eccentric and charismatic scientist Ed Ricketts, who held the controversial theory at the time that all life in the Pacific Ocean was connected teleologically - 'It is advisable to look from the tidepool to the stars and then back to the tidepool again' was killed in a car accident at a railway crossing some years later. The appendix includes a poignant account by Steinbeck of his friend, one of the best personal obituaries I have read. So I heartily recommend that readers don't terminate their reading at the end of the log section of the story.
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