“Trying to remember the Gulf is like trying to recreate a dream,” John Steinbeck wrote about the Gulf of California.
On March 11, 1940, Steinbeck, his wife Carol, and his close companion, marine biologist Ed Ricketts, boarded an old sardine fishing boat in Monterey, California and set sail south to Mexico’s Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez. The 76-foot Western Flyer had been converted into a makeshift laboratory for scientific observation, loaded with preserving jars, long-handled dip nets, microscopes, and a hearty supply of beer. As the vessel slipped past the mouth of the bay and headed south into the open sea, it marked the beginning of a historic journey to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez.
“Let us go,” Steinbeck wrote about the voyage, in The Log from the Sea of Cortez, “into the Sea of Cortez, realizing that we become forever a part of it.”
Over the course of six weeks and 4,000 miles, Steinbeck and Ricketts explored the “washtub bluing blue” body of water wedged between Baja California Peninsula and Mainland Mexico. They collected and preserved marine invertebrates, trudged through eelgrass, peeked under rocks to examine intertidal species, and recorded the distribution of the diverse fauna of the Sea of Cortez—from Sally Lightfoot crabs to gray porpoises. Together, they catalogued over 550 species of marine invertebrates.
But now, one sea creature—absent from Ricketts and Steinbeck’s catalogs—lurks in sometimes massive swarms beneath the Gulf waters: The voracious Humboldt squid, an aggressive cephalopod that can grow up to six feet in length and weigh as much as 110 pounds. Read about the mystery here.
Photos by Ed Ricketts Collection/Western Flyer Foundation/California History Room, Monterey Public Library/Chad Waluk/William Gilly.
