The Log from the Sea of Cortez

by Steinbeck, John; Astro, Richard

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  The tide began to flow rapidly and the winds came up and we went back to the Western Flyer. When we were on board we saw a ship entering the harbor, a big green sailing schooner with her sails furled, coming in under power. She did not approach us, but came to anchorage about as far from us as she could. She was one of those incredible Mexican Gulf craft; it is impossible to say how they float at all and, once floating, how they navigate. The seams are sprung, the paint blistered away, ironwork rusted to lace, decks warped and sagging, and, it is said, so dirty and bebugged that if the cockroaches were not fed, or were in any way frustrated or insulted, they would mutiny and take the ship—and, as one Mexican sailor said, “probably sail her better than the master.”

  Once the anchor of this schooner was down there was no further sign of life on her and there was no sign of life from the buildings ashore either. The little plane sat in its runway and the houses seemed vacant. We had been asked how long we would remain and had said, until the next morning. Now we felt, curiously enough, that we were interfering with something, that some kind of activity would start only when we left. Again, we were probably all wrong, but it is strange that every one of us caught a sinister feeling from the place. Unless the wind was up, or the anchorage treacherous, we ordinarily kept no anchor watch, but this night the boys got up a number of times and were restless. As with the werewolf, we were probably believing our own imaginations. For a short time in the evening there were lights ashore and then they went out. The schooner did not even put up a riding light, but lay completely dark on the water.

  23

  APRIL 2

  We started early and moved out through the channel to the Gulf. It was not long before we could make out Sail Rock far ahead, with Guardian Angel Island to the east of it. Sail Rock looks exactly like a tall Marconi sail in the distance. It is a high, slender pyramid, so whitened with guano that it catches the light and can be seen for a great distance. Because of its extreme visibility it must have been a sailing point for many mariners. It is more than 160 feet high, rises to a sharp point, and there is deep water close in to it. With lots of time, we would have collected at its base, but we were aimed at Puerto Refugio, at the upper end of Guardian Angel Island. We did take some of our usual moving pictures of Sail Rock, and they were even a little worse than usual, for there was laundry drying on a string and the camera was set up behind it. When developed, the film showed only an occasional glimpse of Sail Rock, but a very lively set of scenes of a pair of Tiny’s blue and white shorts snapping in the breeze. It is impossible to say how bad our moving pictures were—one film laboratory has been eager to have a copy of the film, for it embodies in a few thousand feet, so they say, every single thing one should not do with a camera. As an object lesson to beginners they think it would be valuable. If we took close-ups of animals, someone was in the light; the aperture was always too wide or too narrow; we made little jerky pan shots back and forth; we have one of the finest sequences of unadorned sky pictures in existence—but when there was something to take about which we didn’t care, we got it perfectly. We dare say there is not in the world a more spirited and beautiful picture of a pair of blue and white shorts than that which we took passing Sail Rock.

  The long, snake-like coast of Guardian Angel lay to the east of us; a desolate and fascinating coast. It is forty-two miles long, ten miles wide in some places, waterless and uninhabited. It is said to be crawling with rattlesnakes and iguanas, and a persistent rumor of gold comes from it. Few people have explored it or even gone more than a few steps from the shore, but its fine harbor, Puerto Refugio, indicates by its name that many ships have clung to it in storms and have found safety there. Clavigero calls the island both “Angel de la Guardia” and “Angel Custodio,” and we like this latter name better.

  The difficulties of exploration of the island might be very great, but there is a drawing power about its very forbidding aspect—a Golden Fleece, and the inevitable dragon, in this case rattlesnakes, to guard it. The mountains which are the backbone of the island rise to more than four thousand feet in some places, sullen and desolate at the tops but with heavy brush on the skirts. Approaching the northern tip we encountered a deep swell and a fresh breeze. The tides are very large here, fourteen feet during our stay, and that not an extreme tide at all. It is probable that a seventeen-foot tide would not be unusual here. Puerto Refugio is really two harbors connected by a narrow channel. It is a safe, deep anchorage, the only danger lying in the strength and speed of the tidal current, which puts a strain on the anchor tackle. It was so strong, indeed, that we were not able to get weighted nets to the bottom; they pulled out sideways in the water and sieved the current of weed and small animals, so that catch was fairly worthwhile anyway.

  We took our time getting firm anchorage, and at about three-thirty P.M. rowed ashore toward a sand and rubble beach on the southe
astern part of the bay. Here the beach was piled with debris: the huge vertebrae of whales scattered about and piles of broken weed and skeletons of fishes and birds. On top of some low bushes which edged the beach there were great nests three to four feet in diameter, pelican nests perhaps, for there were pieces of fish bone in them, but all the nests were deserted—whether they were old or it was out of season we do not know. We are so used to finding on the beaches evidence of man that it is strange and lonely and frightening to find no single thing that man has touched or used. Tiny and Sparky made a small excursion inland, not over several hundred yards from the shore, and they came back subdued and quiet. They had not seen any rattlesnakes, nor did they want to. The beach was alive with hoppers feeding on the refuse, but the coarse sand was not productive of other animal life. The tide was falling, and we walked around a rocky point to the westward and came into a bouldery flat where the collecting was very rich. The receding water had left many small tide pools. The smoothness of the rocks indicated a fairly strong surf; they were dangerously slippery, and Sally Lightfoots and Pachygrapsus both scuttled about. As we moved out toward the entrance of the harbor, the boulders became larger and smoother, and then there was a sudden change to unbroken reef, and the smooth rocks gave way to barnacle- and weed-covered stones. The tide was down about ten feet now, exposing the lower tide pools, rich and beautiful with sponges and corals and small pleasant algae. We tried to cover as much territory as possible, but again and again found ourselves fascinated by some small and perfect pool, like a set stage, peopled with broken-back shrimps and small masked crabs.