Thoughts on Sea of Cortez and Aquariums, Part 2

This quotation is several pages, but it's why I'm putting it by itself. This is the crux of The Sea of Cortex and of understanding how Steinbeck felt about ecosystems and human communities.

Out 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. Once 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, 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 Saint Augustine, a Saint 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.

Wow. I don't know if you've after tried typing passages (or poems) that speak to you, but it's similar to reading aloud in that it's a much more intimate experience. On the most superficial level, I had never realized that the paragraph was that long, but this time I also paid more attention to all of the disciplines to which he refers. Everything is connected.

Thoughts on Sea of Cortez and Aquariums, Part 1

(View of aquarium before tidepooling. You can see more clearly here that the aquarium is a renovated cannery.)

Yesterday the group met with Craig Strang, who helps run the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley. He's been instrumental in introducing the discussion on ocean literacy in the k-12 classroom. He strongly believes that every students needs to be taught basic facts about the ocean to to understand the ways in which the earth (including humans) are affected by the ocean and the effects the ocean has on the earth (including humans.) More information about this can be found on the Ocean Literacy site http://oceanliteracy.wp2.coexploration.org/. This has been a longtime collaboration with Lawrence Hall of Science, NOAA, the College of Exploration, the National Geographic Society, and the National Science Foundation.

(Manmade tide pool behind the aquarium that directly connects to the bay. They also host a scuba program there. )

Because we were visiting the aquarium for a behind the scenes tour and because Craig recommended it, I read an article by emeritus professor Todd Newberry on that compared aquariums and zoos. It also got into some interesting philosophical content. Here's an excerpt.

First, let's recognize the aquarium for what it really is. What people encounter there is not nature itself, nor the sea in miniature. It is a series of stage sets and show windows. The more we try to pretend that we are looking through a porthole in Captain Nemo's submarine, the more we see a fish tank. The ecology is compressed, confined. We are at a show. The action on the stage is a tightly controlled representation—a selective "re-presentation"—of nature. The aquarium's exhibits have been filtered through multiple human decisions on the way to creating an illusion. An exhibit succeeds, I think, when we participate in its illusion, as we might in that of a magic show or a play. The tired phrase for this-the one about the suspension of disbelief-implies accurately that an aquarium is really a theater. Even its stage is an illusion: in the aquarium, the surface of the sea has been rotated from horizontal to vertical and, like the biblical waters, parted so we can walk dry-shod through darkened depths.

Like the actors in our human plays, the fish in an aquarium, though doubtless the real thing, are in a kind of ecological disguise. In these artificially simplified habitats, they must lead simpler lives than they would in the wild. But like the human actors who make us see some of life's truths with unnatural clarity, the fishy ones can help us focus on just a few events and relationships out of the welter of them that we would encounter if we were in uncontrived nature. Notice (but for now notice only) how these anchovies school tightly together, but those clown fish keep their distance from one another. Watch (but for now watch only) how these jellyfish drive their way downward while those drift through their descent. The illusions of the tanks, like those of the theater, do not fake, they portray. As a visitor, my opportunity is to see through the aquarium's managed portrayals, into the sometimes unmanageable complexities of life in the sea.

An aquarium, then, is a theater. Alive as its exhibits may be, it can be compared, as well, to that other extremely filtered place, a museum. Even in an aquarium with giant exhibits, such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium or the Aquarium of the Pacific, we are in a museum with fish tanks instead of dioramas or paintings along its walls. And after a while, many aquariums, like many museums, produce the same behavior in most people, that of just moving on. There is so much to see! It is too big a meal. After an hour or two, I almost expect a docent disguised as a waiter to come up and ask me, "Are you still working on it?" And so this habit of trudging on, moving along. I call it "glance and go."

The group was challenged to each find an exhibit and sit quietly for 5 minutes. I chose to look at the bubble jellies, and I probably had 40 families pass by (it's a busy aquarium), and even when children wanted to linger, parents pushed them forward. More to see. Bigger animals. Animals with faces. Don't waste photos on jellyfish. When children asked questions, parents didn't bother the read the materials or even try to answer. No modeling curiosity and research here. But it wasn't all that dramatic. The jellies were beautiful. I looked for patterns in swimming, size and breathing speed connections, spot and texture differentiations, and thought about how I need to be reminded to slow down.

(First time a contained environment has been able to grow kelp. Top of the exhibit.)(Same exhibit from the general visitor view.)

You can read the entire article here. It's not too long, and it might make you reconsider how you visit zoos, aquariums, and museums.
http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/newberry_su04.html

(Back of one of the exhibits with easy access for animal care.)

This is part one because a long related Steinbeck quotation will be posted tomorrow. We're using the Sea of Cortez as key to understanding the philosophy and themes in all of Steinbeck's books.

Tide Pooling

(Look at my fun waterproof boots.)

If you ever are offered the opportunity to muck about in a tide pool, I recommend it. We spent over two hours traipsing around, poking under rocks, and lifting up kelp deposits. Susan was kind enough to loan me a pair of waterproof boots, and I stayed dry and warm even while wading through knee-deep water. I also saw the best side of the other teachers-helping each other find the critters we were searching for, holding out hands as a stabilizing force for people whose feet were less sure, and modeling curiosity about all of the creatures we came across. There was at least one abalone, a few fish, a fair number of crustaceans, an overwhelming number of anemones, and millions of jelly-type animals that we didn't always recognize on our own as alive.

(That large gray object on the right is actually a colonial tunicate. I reached my hand in the water to use it to poke the jelly substance immediately to the left, and it was soft. Just about everything you see here is alive.)

(This octopus shouldn't have been in the intertidal. It's now in Gilly's cephalopod lab.)

Steinbeck and Rickett's used to go collecting in the tide pools around Monterey. Reading my post about writing and Cannery Row, you might also remember the the metaphor of a tide pool is the essential metaphor for Cannery Row throughout the book. At our lecture preparing us for the experience, the scientist discussed the importance of looking slowly at details instead of surveying the vistas. This goes against human inclinations, and he challenged us to spend 5 minutes at two different times staring quietly at the same tide pool. The animals living in the pools can feel our approach, sense our shadows, and taste our presence in the water. They need time to adjust to us, and we notice more as we watch the interactions that unfold under the water.

(Bird rock that's appeared in the distance in many of my photos. 6am was the low-low tide of the day.)

(You can see better here how far out we walked.)

Tidepools are also a metaphor for Steinbeck's writing on a larger scale. He cared about symbiosis in communities, and the ways that different species rely on each other. Both he and Ricketts challenged the status quo of organizing (sterilized preserved) animals by phylum, categorization and instead found value in observing living communities. You can see this theme of community design and survivability in all of his fiction and nonfiction writings. Steinbeck observed communities, human and aquatic, in their natural environments, and he let their actions speak for themselves.

Monterey and Chesapeake Bay Comparisons

As an update to yesterday, having grown up near the Chesapeake Bay, I took part in a follow-up discussion with the presenter yesterday that compared revitalization of the Chesapeake and Monterey Bay regions.

People in the middle of the 20th century knew that the water quality of both had diminished, yet the Monterey Bay has been rehabilitated in a way that the Chesapeake Bay has not. Dr. Pulombi offered several potential explanations for this.

Looking at the geography, the Chesapeake Bay is shallower, and there's a higher density of people who live in the areas immediately surrounding the Bay.

The California coast is regulated by laws in the state of California, and the California Coastal Commission is quite strict. In contrast, the Chesapeake Bay runs through several states. Agricultural runoff regulations are not uniform and are not regularly enforced. In terms of blue crabs, Maryland has stopped winter harvesting of females to protect the population, while Virginia has not.

On the human side, the technology industry benefited the California coast because of the vast profits associated with it. A few individuals with substantial funds could pay to clean up the bay and found the aquarium and research institute.

Finally, and significantly, the marketability of the keystone species play a role. "Sea otters are furry and cute, while oysters are very, very tasty." I can tell you with certainty there's an "aawwww" factor around here with sea otters that doesn't occur with oysters.


So, no real answers, just some observations.

Sea Life of the Monterey Bay

Oh Seth, you had to ask to learn more about sea life in the region. Today started the biology section of the institute. Little did you know that I'm way over my head in marine biology terms at the moment. Things like the differences between "lottia digitalis" and "siphonaria maura," for example. Or looking at the effects of "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" on pelagic communities. We're working with a holistic biologist** from Stanford, the director of Hopkins Research Station, and a senior scientist from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Understanding that the majority of teachers aren't science teachers, we got some interesting comparisons such as acrea based on "universality of niche" to Tom Joad's final speech in The Grapes of Wrath, and a line of poetry to the jelly(family) food web.

Here are two creatures from the Monterey Bay that I can almost guarantee will be new to most of you.

The first is the vampyrus (vam-pyro-tooth-us) infernalis. Even though of you without a strong Latin background might notice some similarities to modern English words.



It's a "living fossil." When it's threatened, it assumes a pineapple posture to protect it's mantle by placing its arms in a protective posture. As if that weren't enough, it also squirts bio-luminescent particles from its arm tips that create an enormous and distracting display around itself.



The second was only discovered in 2007, and it was given the name "chetopterus pugaporcinus." You're welcome to translate, but I'll hint that the name is based on the appearance.




In the last 15 years, Humboldt squid have shown up in great numbers from more tropical climates due to rising water temperatures, reduced oxygen in the water, reduced competition, and reduced predation. They're depleting the hake fish population. I don't know if they're considered an invasive species, but the researcher used the word "invasion" to describe what's happened.




It's late, and we need to read The Tragedy of the Commons and several responses for our morning sessions tomorrow. Feel free (except Seth) to skip the next part. It's taken directly from my notes.

When European explorers arrived on the California coast in the 18th century, fish and wildlife were plentiful. Grizzly bears fought on the coast over sea life that washed up on the beaches, and condors ate from the sea as well. Between 1789-1811, 39,173 sea otter pelts were taken. Each pelt could be sold to the Chinese for 30 dollars at a time when 90 dollars bought you a house in San Diego. But, otters play an important role in the ecosystem. They protect sea kelp forests by eating sea urchins and abalone who eat kelp. Because the California waters are cold and sea otters lack blubber, every adult sea otter ate approximately twenty pounds of seafood each day. The kelp forests were devastated. This set a pattern where people hunted animals to extinction, altered the ecosystems, and found new animals to hunt. In order, they hunted otters, whales, seabirds, and abalone. (I'm not including the sardines and canning industry. I could.) Meanwhile, in the early 20th century, Julia Platt, Ph.D., fought against the pollution of the canning industries. She broke glass ceilings all over the world, and she even became mayor of the town of Pacific Grove when she found out she would have the power to create a marine conservation area and wildlife refuge if she did so. Onto the 1930s and sea otters were thought to be extinct. While building the Bixby Bridge on US1, a colony of 30-50 was discovered. Fishermen wanted to shoot them because they ate abalone, but some were moved to Monterey Bay. The otters liked the marine area, and soon the kelp forests began to rebound. With the kelp forests came more fish and with more fish came the seals. The seals brought tourists as well as the interest of Julie Packard (of Hewlett-Packard money) who helped conceive of and fund the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It's one of the best research facilities for aquatics in this country, and it's also increased tourism to the area. (Tourism is now the second largest industry behind agriculture. There's more wildlife viewing than wildlife processing, and maintaining a healthy ocean has become part of the economic model.

*I'm pretty sure this is obvious, but I wanted to make sure people knew that these aren't my photos. :)
**Holistic biology is really interesting. It started for the non-science majors at Stanford because they were overwhelmed by the science focus of the school. It encourages students to examine systems and communities (as Ed Rickett's recommended) as an integrated whole.
***If you want to learn more, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has an excellent website at http://www.mbari.org/
****I saw my first two sea otters out in the bay this evening. They're just as cute as I expected. It was even better because it was a chance occurrence that I walked out back during the 5 minute break.

When in Rome

Anyone who's reading the comments as well as my posts knows that Ms. Gunst wrote,

"Oh, and if you get a chance apparently spas in Japan have these weird little fish baths... you put your feet in and the fish eat all the dirt off your feet. I think you should definitely try that ;)"

Well, the hotel I stayed in last night, offered this service for free to hotel guests. If you are clean and dry and it's before 9pm, you can stick your feet in the fish pool. Except the fish don't eat dirt off your feet, they eat the dead skin!

It tickles like crazy, and kind of feels like little electrical shocks because their mouths are vibrating so quickly! They say to leave your feet in for about 10 minutes. My feet didn't feel any different after, but I did go back to the hotel room and take a shower. The whole idea of sticking my feel into a communal pool of flesh-eating fish grossed me out more than just a little. Anything for you, Ms. Gunst. :)

Not following the "When in Rome" theme, I did not eat this appetizer tray for lunch today. Actually, I wasn't given the option; I got a beautiful plateful of salad instead. From what I understand, much of the food was quite gelatinous, but not in the sweet sugary way that we associate with jello. It was also full of fish.No judgments on tastiness though. Most of the items went over quite well.