The Log from the Sea of Cortez (31 page)
Read The Log from the Sea of Cortez Online
Authors: John Steinbeck,Richard Astro
Within our own species we have great variation between these two reactions. One man may beat his life away in furious assault on the barrier, where another simply waits for the tide to pick him up. Such variation is also observable among the higher vertebrates, particularly among domestic animals. It would be strange if it were not also true of the lower vertebrates, among the individualistic ones anyway. A fish, like the tuna or the sardine, which lives in a school, would be less likely to vary than this lonely horned shark, for the school would impose a discipline of speed and uniformity, and those individuals which would not or could not meet the school’s requirements would be killed or lost or left behind. The overfast would be eliminated by the school as readily as the over-slow, until a standard somewhere between the fast and slow had been attained. Not intending a pun, we might note that our schools have to some extent the same tendency. A Harvard man, a Yale man, a Stanford man—that is, the ideal—is as easily recognized as a tuna, and he has, by a process of elimination, survived the tests against idiocy and brilliance. Even in physical matters the standard is maintained until it is impossible, from speech, clothing, haircuts, posture, or state of mind, to tell one of these units of his school from another. In this connection it would be interesting to know whether the general collectivization of human society might not have the same effect. Factory mass production, for example, requires that every man conform to the tempo of the whole. The slow must be speeded up or eliminated, the fast slowed down. In a thoroughly collectivized state, mediocre efficiency might be very great, but only through the complete elimination of the swift, the clever, and the intelligent, as well as the incompetent. Truly collective man might in fact abandon his versatility. Among school animals there is little defense technique except headlong flight. Such species depend for survival chiefly on tremendous reproduction. The great loss of eggs and young to predators is the safety of the school, for it depends for its existence on the law of probability that out of a great many which start some will finish.
It is interesting and probably not at all important to note that when a human state is attempting collectivization, one of the first steps is a frantic call by the leaders for an increased birth rate—replacement parts in a shoddy and mediocre machine.
Our interest had been from the first in the common animals and their associations, and we had not looked for rarities. But it was becoming apparent that we were taking a number of new and unknown species. Actually, more than fifty species undescribed at the time of capture will have been taken. These will later have been examined, classified, described, and named by specialists. Some of them may not be determined for years, for it is one of the little by-products of the war that scientific men are cut off from one another. A Danish specialist in one field is unable to correspond with his colleague in California. Thus some of these new animals may not be named for a long time. We have listed in the Appendix those already specified and indicated in so far as possible those which have not been worked on by specialists.
Dr. Rolph Bolin, ichthyologist at the Hopkins Marine Station, found in our collection what we thought to be a new species of commensal fish which lives in the anus of a cucumber, flipping in and out, possibly feeding on the feces of the host but more likely merely hiding in the anus from possible enemies. This fish later turned out to be an already named species, but, carrying on the ancient and disreputable tradition of biologists, we had hoped to call it by the euphemistic name
Proctophilus winchellii.
Proctophilus winchellii.
There are some marine biologists whose chief interest is in the rarity, the seldom seen and unnamed animal. These are often wealthy amateurs, some of whom have been suspected of wishing to tack their names on unsuspecting and unresponsive invertebrates. The passion for immortality at the expense of a little beast must be very great. Such collectors should to a certain extent be regarded as in the same class with those philatelists who achieve a great emotional stimulation from an unusual number of perforations or a misprinted stamp. The rare animal may be of individual interest, but he is unlikely to be of much consequence in any ecological picture. The common, known, multitudinous animals, the red pelagic lobsters which litter the sea, the hermit crabs in their billions, scavengers of the tide pools, would by their removal affect the entire region in widening circles. The disappearance of plankton, although the components are microscopic, would probably in a short time eliminate every living thing in the sea and change the whole of man’s life, if it did not through a seismic disturbance of balance eliminate all life on the globe. For these little animals, in their incalculable numbers, are probably the base food supply of the world. But the extinction of one of the rare animals, so avidly sought and caught and named, would probably go unnoticed in the cellular world.
Our own interest lay in relationships of animal to animal. If one observes in this relational sense, it seems apparent that species are only commas in a sentence, that each species is at once the point and the base of a pyramid, that all life is relational to the point where an Einsteinian relativity seems to emerge. And then not only the meaning but the feeling about species grows misty. One merges into another, groups melt into ecological groups until the time when what we know as life meets and enters what we think of as non-life: barnacle and rock, rock and earth, earth and tree, tree and rain and air. And the units nestle into the whole and are inseparable from it. Then one can come back to the microscope and the tide pool and the aquarium. But the little animals are found to be changed, no longer set apart and alone. And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things—plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.
22
APRIL 1
Without the log we should have lost track of the days of the week, were it not for the fact that Sparky made spaghetti on Thursdays and Sundays. We think he did this by instinct, that he could come out of a profound amnesia, and if he felt an impulse to make spaghetti, it would be found to be either Thursday or Sunday. On Monday we sailed for Angeles Bay, which was to be our last station on the Peninsula. The tides were becoming tremendous, and while the tidal bore of the Colorado River mouth was still a long way off, Tony was already growing nervous about it. During the trip between San Francisquito and Angeles Bay, we worried again over the fact that we were not taking photographs. As has been said, no one was willing to keep his hands dry long enough to use the cameras. Besides, none of us knew much about cameras. But it was a constant source of bad conscience to us.
On this day it bothered us so much that we got out the big camera and began working out its operation. We figured everything except how to put the shutter curtain back to a larger aperture without making an exposure. Several ways were suggested and, as is often the case when more than one method is possible, an argument broke out which left shutters and cameras behind. This was a good one. Everyone except Sparky and Tiny, who had the wheel, gathered on the hatch around the camera, and the argument was too much for the steersmen. They sent down respectful word that either we should bring the camera up where they could hear the argument, or they would abandon their posts. We suggested that this would be mutiny. Then Sparky explained that on an Italian fishing boat in Monterey mutiny, far from being uncommon, was the predominant state of affairs, and that he and Tiny would rather mutiny than not. We took the camera up on the deckhouse and promptly forgot it in another argument.
Except for a completely worthless lot of 8-mm. movie film, this was the closest we came to taking pictures. But some day we shall succeed.
Angeles Bay is very large—twenty-five square miles, the
Coast
Pilot says. It is land-locked by fifteen islands, between several of which there is entrance depth. This is one of the few harbors in the whole Gulf about which the
Coast Pilot
is willing to go out on a limb. The anchorage in the western part of the bay, it says, is safe from all winds. We entered through a deep channel between Red Point and two small islets, pulled into eight fathoms of water near the shore, and dropped our anchor. The
Coast Pilot
had not mentioned any settlement, but here there were new buildings, screened and modern, and on a tiny airfield a plane sat. It was an odd feeling, for we had been a long time without seeing anything modern. Our feeling was more of resentment than of pleasure. We went ashore about three-thirty in the afternoon, and were immediately surrounded by Mexicans who seemed curious and excited about our being there. They were joined by three Americans who said they had flown in for the fishing, and they too seemed very much interested in what we wanted until they were convinced it was marine animals. Then they and the Mexicans left us severely alone. Perhaps we had been hearing too many rumors: it was said that many guns were being run over the border for the trouble that was generally expected during the election. The fishermen did not look like fishermen, and Mexicans and Americans were too interested in us until they discovered what we were doing and too uninterested after they had found out. Perhaps we imagined it, but we had a strong feeling of secrecy about the place. Maybe there really were gold mines there and new buildings for recent development. A road went northward from there to San Felipe Bay, we were told. The country was completely parched and desolate, but half-way up a hill we could see a green spot where a spring emerged from a mountain. It takes no more than this to create a settlement in Lower California.
Coast
Pilot says. It is land-locked by fifteen islands, between several of which there is entrance depth. This is one of the few harbors in the whole Gulf about which the
Coast Pilot
is willing to go out on a limb. The anchorage in the western part of the bay, it says, is safe from all winds. We entered through a deep channel between Red Point and two small islets, pulled into eight fathoms of water near the shore, and dropped our anchor. The
Coast Pilot
had not mentioned any settlement, but here there were new buildings, screened and modern, and on a tiny airfield a plane sat. It was an odd feeling, for we had been a long time without seeing anything modern. Our feeling was more of resentment than of pleasure. We went ashore about three-thirty in the afternoon, and were immediately surrounded by Mexicans who seemed curious and excited about our being there. They were joined by three Americans who said they had flown in for the fishing, and they too seemed very much interested in what we wanted until they were convinced it was marine animals. Then they and the Mexicans left us severely alone. Perhaps we had been hearing too many rumors: it was said that many guns were being run over the border for the trouble that was generally expected during the election. The fishermen did not look like fishermen, and Mexicans and Americans were too interested in us until they discovered what we were doing and too uninterested after they had found out. Perhaps we imagined it, but we had a strong feeling of secrecy about the place. Maybe there really were gold mines there and new buildings for recent development. A road went northward from there to San Felipe Bay, we were told. The country was completely parched and desolate, but half-way up a hill we could see a green spot where a spring emerged from a mountain. It takes no more than this to create a settlement in Lower California.
We went first to collect on a bouldery beach on the western side of the bay, and found it fairly rich in fauna. The highest rocks were peopled by anemones, cucumbers, sea-cockroaches and some small porcellanids. There were no Sally Lightfoots visible, in fact no large crabs at all, and only a very few small members of
Heliaster.
The dominant animal here was a soft marine pulmonate which occurred in millions on and under the rocks. We took several hundred of them. There were some chitons, both the smooth brown
Chiton virgulatus
and the fuzzy
Acanthochitona exquisitus.
We saw fine big clusters of the minute tube-worm,
Salmacina,
and there were a great many flatworms oozing along on the undersides of the rocks like drops of spilled brown sirup. Under the rocks we found two octopi, both
Octopus bimaculatus.
They are very clever and active in escaping, and when finally captured they grip the hand and arm with their little suckers, and, if left for any length of time, will cause small blood blisters or, rather, what in another field are called “monkey bites.” Under the water and apparently below the ordinary tidal range were brilliant-yellow
Geodia
and many examples of another sponge of magnificent shape and size and color. This last (erect colonies of the cosmopolitan
Cliona celata,
more familiar as a boring sponge) was a reddish pink and stood high and vase-like, some of them several feet in diameter. Most of them were perfectly regular in shape. We took a number of them, dried some out of formaldehyde, and preserved others. The algal zonation on this slope was sharp and apparent—a
Sargassum
was submerged two or three feet at ebb. The rocks in the intertidal were perfectly smooth and bare but below this
Sargassum johnstonii,
in deeper water, there was a great zone of flat, frond-like alga,
Padina durvillaei.
75
The wind rippled the surface badly but when an occasional lull came we could look down into this deeper water. It did not seem rich in life except for the algae, but then we were unable to turn over the rocks on the bottom.
Heliaster.
The dominant animal here was a soft marine pulmonate which occurred in millions on and under the rocks. We took several hundred of them. There were some chitons, both the smooth brown
Chiton virgulatus
and the fuzzy
Acanthochitona exquisitus.
We saw fine big clusters of the minute tube-worm,
Salmacina,
and there were a great many flatworms oozing along on the undersides of the rocks like drops of spilled brown sirup. Under the rocks we found two octopi, both
Octopus bimaculatus.
They are very clever and active in escaping, and when finally captured they grip the hand and arm with their little suckers, and, if left for any length of time, will cause small blood blisters or, rather, what in another field are called “monkey bites.” Under the water and apparently below the ordinary tidal range were brilliant-yellow
Geodia
and many examples of another sponge of magnificent shape and size and color. This last (erect colonies of the cosmopolitan
Cliona celata,
more familiar as a boring sponge) was a reddish pink and stood high and vase-like, some of them several feet in diameter. Most of them were perfectly regular in shape. We took a number of them, dried some out of formaldehyde, and preserved others. The algal zonation on this slope was sharp and apparent—a
Sargassum
was submerged two or three feet at ebb. The rocks in the intertidal were perfectly smooth and bare but below this
Sargassum johnstonii,
in deeper water, there was a great zone of flat, frond-like alga,
Padina durvillaei.
75
The wind rippled the surface badly but when an occasional lull came we could look down into this deeper water. It did not seem rich in life except for the algae, but then we were unable to turn over the rocks on the bottom.
While we collected, our fishermen rowed aimlessly about, and in our suspicious state of mind they seemed to be more anxious to appear to be fishing than actually to be fishing. We have little doubt that we were entirely wrong about this, but the place breathed suspicion, and no other place had been like that.
We went back on board and deposited our catch, then took the skiff to the sand flats on the northern side of the bay. It was a hard, compact mud sand with a long shallow beach, and it was heavy and difficult to dig into. We took there a number of
Chione
and
Tivela
clams and one poor half-dead amphioxus. Again the tide was not low enough to reach the real habitat of amphioxus, but if there was one stray in the high area, there must be many to be taken on an extremely low tide. We found a number of long turretedsnails carrying commensal anemones on their shells. On this flat there were a number of imbedded small rocks, and these were rich with animals. There were rock-oysters on them and large highly ornamented limpets and many small snails. Tube-worms clustered on these rocks with pea crabs commensal in the tubes. One fair-sized octopus (not
bimaculatus)
had his home under one of these rocks. These small stones must have been havens in the shifting sands for many animals. The fine mud-like sand would make locomotion difficult except for specially equipped animals, and the others clustered to the rocks where there was footing and security.
Chione
and
Tivela
clams and one poor half-dead amphioxus. Again the tide was not low enough to reach the real habitat of amphioxus, but if there was one stray in the high area, there must be many to be taken on an extremely low tide. We found a number of long turretedsnails carrying commensal anemones on their shells. On this flat there were a number of imbedded small rocks, and these were rich with animals. There were rock-oysters on them and large highly ornamented limpets and many small snails. Tube-worms clustered on these rocks with pea crabs commensal in the tubes. One fair-sized octopus (not
bimaculatus)
had his home under one of these rocks. These small stones must have been havens in the shifting sands for many animals. The fine mud-like sand would make locomotion difficult except for specially equipped animals, and the others clustered to the rocks where there was footing and security.
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