The Sea of Cortez

Sea, salt, sand, sun,

A watery expanse,

immense, fathomless,

always there, always changing.

Shrimp, fish and turtles,

replaced by giant squid;

tending toward nothingness?

In 1940, John Steinbeck, author of ‘The Grapes of Wrath' and ‘East of Eden', took a 4,000-mile voyage with his good friend, marine biologist, Ed Ricketts, author of ‘Between Pacific Tides'. They were transported on board the Gus D., the Captain of which was Frank Donahue. In agreeing to take Steinbeck and Ricketts on this voyage, Captain Donahue, an aging fisherman, had proclaimed that he was through fishing. "There's not enough fish left to make it worth my while," he commented.

Steinbeck made this voyage famous by subsequently writing his factual account entitled ‘The Log from the Sea of Cortez.' In Steinbeck's log, and from a rediscovered copy of Ed Ricketts' 1940 field notes, one can find detailed descriptions of the life that characterized the Sea.

Even in 1940, the oceans were far from their natural state as Ricketts and Steinbeck quickly came to realize. Most of the pearl oysters that had created the industry upon which the town of La Paz was founded were gone, and commercial U.S. and Japanese fishermen had already depleted the stocks of tuna and shrimp to a deplorable degree. Moreover, sharks had been killed in quantity for their livers, which were used for the preparation of concoctions meant to remedy iron poor "tired blood."

At one point, Steinbeck boarded a Japanese fish trawler for what proved to be a horrific personal experience. Weighted nets designed to drag along the ocean bottom to catch shrimp would tear up the natural habitat, bringing up ten times as much fish, to be discarded, as shrimp, to be kept. Steinbeck noted that the shrimp fishermen had created "a large destructive machine that was committing a true crime against nature." He was shocked and appalled.

These foreign fleets were eventually banned from the coastal waters of Mexico, only to be replaced by Mexican tuna boats and shrimp trawlers as well as Mexican fishing "pangas". Pangas filled the waters throughout the 1970s and '80s, providing sustenance for the expanding Mexican population. The fishermen aboard would spread gill nets, already banned throughout many parts of the world, to catch and kill anything that might get snagged. Only a small fraction of the catch would be kept and sold. The writing-weary Steinbeck felt indignation and proclaimed that marine biology was to be his new passion. His life took on a new and different purpose.

In spite of these distractive activities, Steinbeck wrote of magnificent large sea turtles, some up to 8 feet in length, and of "leaping tuna all about us whenever we crossed the path of a school." Using small nets, the crew would scoop fish out of the sea, pass them through the galley window to the frying pan for the "freshest fish ever eaten." There still seemed to be plenty of good fishing left. But that was 1940.

This spring, 2004, Chuck Baxter and a group of marine enthusiasts from the Monterey Aquarium in Northern California decided to repeat the voyage of the Gus D. They undertook a 2-month trip, comparing notes with those of Steinbeck and Ricketts. Along the way, they noted a profusion of biological activity in the tide pools of Coronado Island near Loreto, which Steinbeck had described as meager. Why were their impressions so different? Had the sea life in the pools of Coronado Island increased dramatically during the past 64 years? The answer proved to be quite the contrary. In 1940, the marine life on this tiny island was unimpressive compared to that found in other places such as Cabo San Lucas. By 2004, Cabo and other sites described by Steinbeck had been largely cleared of fish, shellfish, and most other forms of sea life. This they deduced had been a combined consequence of over-fishing, habitat destruction and pollutant runoff from the urbanized coastal towns.

Baxter and crew arrived at the Sea of Cortez to evaluate the consequences of 64 years of human activity. They stopped at the same tide pools and sought the same marine creatures that Ricketts and Steinbeck had described. The rugged cactus forests lining the coast of Bahia Concepcion looked exactly as Steinbeck had described. These modern adventurers also noted with pleasure the same fiery sunsets and the ultramarine blue water that Steinbeck had publicized. But the "tuna waters" boasted no tuna. Nor was a single sea turtle spotted. Not once did they see "leaping swordfish" that according to Steinbeck, seemed "to play in pure joy, or jumped for the sake of exhibitionism." In the tide pools, some of the creatures reported by Ricketts and Steinbeck could be identified, but many others were not to be found, except as dead relics in the souvenir shops of coastal towns.

Much to their surprise, Baxter and his associates discovered Jumbo Humboldt squid weighing up to 100 pounds and reaching a length of 7 feet. These remarkable creatures were repeatedly sighted even though Steinbeck and Ricketts had never mentioned such jelly monsters. In fact, the squid proved to support a major fishery in the Sea of Cortez, an industry that had been non-existent in 1940. So where did the squid come from? A little research revealed that marine biologists had studied the phenomenon and concluded that the squid flourished because all of their primary predators, sharks, tuna and other large fish, had disappeared. Moreover, "phantom blooms," rich sources of squid food, were prevalent. A dramatically altered ecosystem that still supported life, but very different forms of life, had replaced the one left behind. These changes, they concluded, would be essentially irreversible with no hope of restoration to the conditions that had existed before man began his meddling activities.

All things unite in the one - Plankton, a shimmering phosphorescent sea, spinning planets and an expanding universe - these are part of the one. All are bound together by a continuity in space and the elastic string of time. It seems advisable to look from the tide pools to the stars and then back to the tide pools. Only then can we recognize our world and put it in perspective. A speck of dust. Insignificant. But beautiful. All we have.

Adapted from ‘Sea Change Since the Era of Steinbeck' by Kenneth R. Weiss, LA Times, pp. A1, A28, A29, Wednesday, June 16, 2004.