The Log From The Sea of Cortez

Before dawn, the crew surveys the inner bay of Puerto Escondido by skiff and flashlight. A good low tide exposes an eastern shore dominated by large chocolate brown holothurians that feed in great numbers. Ruffled clams are common, but the under-rock fauna is sparse among fresh sharp rock and mangroves. A few synaptids appear. The western sand flats hold green knobbed coral, likely Porites porosa, scattered Cerianthus, and a few bivalves. Two dark brown, cat-like mammals fish at the edge and vanish into the mangroves. The narrow southern entrance concentrates life where strong tidal flow brings food. Red and green cushion stars are abundant. A solitary soft coral-like organism occurs in clustered knobs. A large pelagic coelenterate with orange pink tentacles stings severely. The crew collects giant sea hares, clams, and a small hacha, enduring cuts and stings.

Puerto Escondido proves exceptionally rich because sand, stone, broken rock, coral, warm shallows, and racing tide sit together. The party notes rock isopods, sponges, tunicates, turbellarians, chitons, bivalves, snails, hermits and other crabs, Heteronereids, mysids, small ophiurans, limpets, worms, six to eight cucumbers, and 11 starfishes. They sail at once to Loreto. Officials arrive by canoe and conduct formalities. The town lies quiet, with gardens and a ruined mission. A small boy guides them to the belltower and a barred chapel that holds the Virgin of Loreto. They sail north to Coronado Island and collect along a western reef.

Solitary corals are plentiful but hard to remove cleanly. Heads of zoanthid anemones occur with large hemispherical yellow sponges later identified as Tethya aurantia and a Geodia species. The shore feels “burned” (146) and inhospitable. This view opens a broader route of thought on Gulf distribution. Steinbeck outlines a working hypothesis that colder water forms entered when lower Quaternary seas and southward isotherms allowed mixing near Magdalena, then were trapped in the upper Gulf as waters warmed, rather than by a later transpeninsular channel. Steinbeck ends by noting how elegant hypotheses and fixed beliefs resist contrary fact.

Feeling “very tired” (150), the crew rest after Coronado and sleep late, then get under way for Concepción Bay. They try for swordfish with a light harpoon from the bow, land tuna on trolling lines, and salt the catch in a barrel that later proves ruined by too much salt. They round Aguja Point, avoid Mulegé, and work the eastern shore of the bay. The beaches hold pebbles, shell drifts, murex shells, and many clams. Fiddler crabs sit by wet burrows. Doves call in the hills. They collect from the skiff by diving, taking sand dollars of two common species and one rare, brilliant red sponge arborescences, large hachas crusted with tunicates and small ophiurans, masked rock clams with solitary corals, and many large living snails.

Ice is gone and the small refrigerating motor labors in the heat. After dark, they hang a shaded lamp over the side, use long-handled dip-nets and enamel pans, and take flying fish, cream-spotted snake eels with blue eyes, heteronereis, swimming crabs, annelids, mysids, and nearly invisible ribbon fish. Baited crab nets on the bottom bring up voracious long-spined urchins that aim their spines at a hand, stalk-eyed snails, and dromiaceous crabs. They note that in this water wounded or careless animals likely die at once. Steinbeck regrets that they lack a full observation aquarium and remarks that their polarized aquarium prevents viewing. A brief laboratory note follows: Anemones show selective feeding, oxygen intoxication, starvation-lengthened bodies, and altered attack behavior over months.

The crew tracks the tide at Concepción Bay with a flagged stake and abandons charts as unreliable. Morning collections begin on a steep-to-gentle beach as the water falls and turns. They take two cake urchins, including Encope californica, a common keyhole sand dollar, and a rare related species. A flat sand-encrusted sea cucumber appears in two feet of water. Giant heart urchins occur in great numbers at about three feet. The shore profile recalls Puget Sound, with gravel high in the littoral and sandy shallows below, thick with tall algae presumed to be Sargassum. They collect giant stalk-eyed conchs, several holothurians, Cerianthus, and many hachas whose shells carry sponges, tunicates, crabs, snapping shrimps, and large scalloped limpets. Some hachas hold large pale commensal shrimps in the mantle folds.

They get under way for San Lucas Cove while preserving and labeling sand dollars in formalin and sun-drying others. Mulegé slides past abeam. Tiny and Sparky handle headland navigation more confidently. Since Tex will be getting married soon, the crew tries to put him on a diet to “put him in a marrying condition” (161), but they fail. They anchor outside San Lucas Cove to avoid strong current and biting black flies. A large shark cuts past the boat at speed; they shoot at it but only hit a fin.

Under a nightlight, they net small squid, heteronereis, crab larvae, transparent ribbon fish, and attempt a two-net technique for flying fish. A mild celebration brings a mix-up of Epsom salts and cracker meal and prompts a brief reflection on remedies, with fried fish and medicinal whisky used as a practical stand-in.

In the morning, they work the ebb at San Lucas Cove, crossing the exposed sandbar and flats covered in broken shells. They dig out small clams and a few smooth Venus types, take one large male fiddler crab, and find Cerianthus in great numbers. Hermit crabs and fast swimming crabs with bright blue claws are common; in buckets, the swimmers fight and lose limbs. They test the swimmers’ tolerance and note that they weaken in air, yet endure freshwater better than most crabs. They hunt amphioxus on the bar with shovels and quick hands and manage only a few weak specimens in a not-very-low tide. Cerianthus casings hold many tiny commensal sipunculids. The cove is warm and slough-like, and high salinity and heat complicate anesthesia. Epsom salts fail to keep Cerianthus expanded for preservation and possible cold methods are noted for later trials.

They sail before noon, pass Santa Rosalia without stopping, and reach San Carlos Bay in the evening. The outer bay offers good anchorage, while the inner lagoon has a sand beach and a storm line of decaying seaweed thick with flies and beachhoppers. In sand, they find dark Pismo-like clams and ribbed mussel-like clams. On rocks, they take two chitons, several new snails and crabs, blue sharp-spined urchins, flatworms that evade capture and dissolve in preservative, and small Heliaster. Heart urchins are numerous under the sand. At night, a shaded lamp brings “a great run of transparent fish” (168), as well as a squid, a larval mantis shrimp, and the usual heteronereis and crustacea.

Morning at San Carlos brings a “very poor” (169) tide and wind that ruffles the surface, so the crew surveys the upper shore instead of the low littoral. They note the sulphury green and black sea cucumber as the most widespread animal, with Heliaster close behind. High barnacles and limpets are found among the sun and spray. Under rocks, they find ruffled mussel-like clams, brown chitons, cucumbers, a few Heliaster, verrucose anemones, club urchins, and masses of attached garbanzo clams; Ophiothrix spiculata is absent. Further down, sponges are abundant, including a blue form, with octopi, a single chiton species, purple urchins, heart urchins, sipunculids, tunicates, large yellow Cliona-like sponges, white Steletta, orange nudibranchs, giant terebellid worms, pulmonate snails, a ribbon worm, and solitary corals. Steinbeck emphasizes associations on the shore and remarks on the limits of naming schemes.

Northward, the coast thins in people but shows turtle camps and an old harpoon. Steinbeck reflects on local indifference to modern projects and states his own motive as simple pleasure in the natural world. Life aboard is now reduced to hats, trunks, salt coffee, fish, biscuits, and spaghetti; a brief quarrel over lemon pie ends pie-making. The crew feels the outside world recede as they watch birds and schools. They anchor at San Francisquito Bay in four fathoms, set a tide stake, and collect in cold wind, finding three crab species, barnacles, large limpets, Tegula and small Purpura, smooth brown and bristle chitons, rusty red tube worms, tunicates, Astrometis, holothurians, and a recently shed lobster shell cleaned by isopods. Night bottom nets draw a horned shark that refuses to release the bait, lies alive on deck for many hours, and dies only in formaldehyde, prompting a brief contrast between endurance and speed.