“This is not mysticism, but identification; man, building this greatest and most personal of all tools, has in turn received a boat-shaped mind, and the boat, a man-shaped soul.”

Though Steinbeck has stated his scientific ambitions for the book, there are times when he cannot help but indulge his writerly talents. The sardine fishing vessel which they charter may just seem like another boat but it—like every boat—is an extension of the human condition. Steinbeck claims to be leaning toward anthropology more than mysticism in his theory, but there is a romantic quality to his statement which undergirds his science with literature.

“Such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle.”

Though Steinbeck is not much of a scientist, he quickly adopts his co-author’s prejudices. Those scientists who do not go out into the field are castigated as mere embalmers or picklers; they lack the courage or the wherewithal, the book implies, to venture into the field. Thus, the book creatures a moral dimension to fieldwork. To be a true biologist, the book suggests, a scientist must take to the field.

“All about us war bustled, although we had no war; steel and thunder, powder and men—the men preparing thoughtlessly, like dead men, to destroy things.”

The timing of the voyage is such that the war cannot be ignored, introducing the theme of The Pressures of War on Scientific Research. The bustle of military action provides a backdrop to the preparatory stages of the voyage. At this stage, the men are not yet aware of how expansive of an event World War II will become but there is an ominous understanding that America might get involved. The military preparation is violent and pessimistic, while the scientific voyage is benign and optimistic.

“Everything ate everything else with a furious exuberance.”

The aim of the voyage is to create a scientific map of the ecologies of the Sea of Cortez. In the most reductive terms possible, Steinbeck shares a preliminary version of this map. Everything eats everything in the natural world, he suggests, and it does so with a “furious exuberance.” This furious exuberance speaks to the vivacity and the essentialness of these ecosystems. They are the foundation of natural life, even if they may appear violent, speaking to Interconnection and the Ecology of All Life.

“We came to envy this Darwin on his sailing ship. He had so much room and so much time.”

The crew’s relationship to Darwin is nuanced. They envy Darwin, they say, because he had time in which to write his journals and share his learnings. Their work is nevertheless explicitly informed by what Darwin achieved, suggesting that their envy is buoyed by their knowledge of his significance. Rather than trying to copy Darwin, they are iterating upon his ideas, just as he iterated on what came before him. Darwin is a guiding light, but also a beacon to strive constantly toward.

“The reports of biologists are the measure, not of the science, but of the men themselves.”

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is essentially a biologists’ report of the journey undertaken to document the ecosystems in a specific place. If the reports of such studies serve as insights into the biologists themselves, then Steinbeck’s prose also reinforces Exploration as Both Literal and Intellectual Journey.

“The greatest danger to a speculative biologist is analogy.”

By the time Steinbeck feels more comfortable writing in a scientific mode, he begins to deploy literary devices such as irony more often. The greatest danger to speculative biologists, he suggests, is analogy, even though he is more than comfortable with drawing analogies and comparisons throughout his work. His comment is self-aware, reminding the audience that—in spite of his role as the narrator of this book—he is more of a writer than a biologist.

“The great literature of this kind is kept vocal by the combined efforts of Puritans and postal regulations, and so the saga of Tiny must remain unwritten.”

Steinbeck’s narrative style alludes to the literary work which might exist were he not focused on creating something more scientific. The life of Tiny, for example, is filled with raunchy anecdotes and stories which would outrage a puritanical public. Steinbeck has heard these stories, but his comment suggests that this is not the place to share them. He does not want to distract from the scientific value of the work with stories from Tiny’s past; he admires Ed Ricketts and values Ed’s work too much to turn this report into literature.

“And from that moment it became Tiny’s ambition to catch and kill one of the giant rays.”

Though Tiny’s past is off-limits for the narrative, his present—and particularly his battles against the environment and nature—are fair game. Tiny resolves to catch a giant manta ray, in spite of the paucity of options when it comes to taking the ray home. The ambition is almost something akin to Captain Ahab, whose pursuit of the whale in Moby Dick is a grandiose demonstration of the obsession of man. Tiny’s ambition is operating on a lower level, but the literary parallel remains.

“We could not spoil such a dream.”

While at sea, the Americans meet Mexican and Indigenous people who have a warped understanding of what it means to be American. They believe that Americans are all extraordinarily wealthy; though this is not true, the Americans do not want to shatter the illusion. Rather than challenge this version of America, they prefer to linger a moment in the misconception, imagining vicariously the United States as a paradise.

“The literature of science is filled with answers found when the question propounded had an entirely different direction and end.”

Steinbeck challenges the purity of science. The nature of a theory or hypothesis, he suggests, is such that fellow scientists can be reluctant to challenge what seems so sensible and coherent. Instead, science must rely on such presumptions being challenged by unrelated questions because scientists are unwilling to stand up to something which seems to make sense but which may not be exactly true.

“We do not know that this is so, but it is repeated about Mulege very often.”

The scientists aboard the Western Flyer are not above reproach. Though their mission is to document an entire ecosystem to further the understanding of the natural world, they are also prone to rumor and mysticism. They do not know the truth about Mulege, for example, but they do not go there because they have heard dark rumors. Rather than find out the truth for themselves, as might be befitting of scientists, they stick to the rumors and share them with the audience as justification for their actions.

“Darwin was not saying how it was with Valparaiso, but rather how it was with him.”

The longer the voyage goes on, the more acquainted Steinbeck becomes with Darwin as a historical and a literary figure. While the crew strives to emulate Darwin in their collection of specimens, Steinbeck begins to reflect on the character of Darwin himself. He projects motivation and reason onto the historical figure, informed by his own recent experiences. This illustrates the changing relationship between the crew and the scientific legacy with which they interact, while invoking Exploration as Both Literal and Intellectual Journey.

“These were the common animals and the ones in which we were most interested, for while we took rarities when we came upon them in normal observation, our interest lay in the large groups and their associations.”

For many voyages, the chance to find unique or rare creatures may be considered a priority. For the crew of the Western Flyer, however, the opposite is true. Rare creatures have no interest for them; to document an anomaly is a waste of time. Instead, the crew seeks to build a map of the most common creatures so as to better understand the ecosystem as a whole, reflecting their interest in Interconnection and the Ecology of All Life.

“We discussed bats, and the horror they create in people and the myths about them.”

Though the crew spends the voyage documenting the ecosystems via flora and fauna, the arrival of the bats alludes to a more complex relationship between humans and the natural world. Vampires and werewolves are part of a supernatural system of horrors and fears which springs forth from the natural world. Supernatural creatures are informed by the natural world, so they merit discussion in a scientific book which is ostensibly serious. Bats are real, vampires are not, but the horror created by bats informs the vampire mythology in a way that merits discussion.

“Life has one final end, to be alive.”

Steinbeck’s statement is both a reflection of Darwin’s theories of evolution and an ominous foreshadowing of what will happen in the Appendix. Darwin’s idea of the survival of the fittest pits survival as the ultimate motivation. For Ed Ricketts, however, the “final end” (199) will come in tragic, unexpected, unnatural circumstances. Life may have the only aim of survival, but the book itself takes on a new meaning: To eulogize the life of Ed Ricketts, allowing him to live beyond the final pages of this work.

“We had been drifting in some kind of dual world—a parallel realistic world; and the preoccupations of the world we came from, which are considered realistic, were to us filled with mental mirage.”

The voyage has been such a captivating experience for the crew that they feel as though they have entered into some parallel reality. As they return to shore, they return to the mundanity of their real lives. With the military build up of World War II occurring at the same time, the intrusion of real life into this temporary reality cannot be ignored, invoking The Pressures of War on Scientific Research. Such political matters seem almost like a mirage after so long spent dedicated to the travails of the natural world.

“They were good men, but they were caught in a large destructive machine, good men doing a bad thing.”

The men of the Japanese fishing fleet cause a great deal of destruction in the local ecology, seemingly unaware of Interconnection and the Ecology of All Life. They dredge everything but only take the shrimp, leaving much dead behind. In spite of the destruction they cause, the book is unwilling to condemn them as inherently evil. Rather, they are products of a capitalist society which reward such destruction financially. They are “good men doing a bad thing” because society incentivizes individual greed over communal good.

“But all the fish were actually eaten.”

The condemnation of the Japanese fishing fleet is clear in the book, but it is not total. Ed Ricketts encourages Tiny to see the ecology as a whole, reflecting Interconnection and the Ecology of All Life. While the fishing vessels might seem like unnatural intrusions, the death that they cause is not actually wasteful. The dead creatures are fed to the living, thus perpetuating the cycle of life. What seems like waste is actually life by other means.

“Several doctors had come in and more were phoning, wanting to help because they all loved him.”

The Appendix opens with the tragedy of Ed Rickett’s death. Even in the chaos of the car wreck, however, Steinbeck uses the horror to show how well-loved his friend truly was. While there may not be any doctor able to save Ed, more doctors keep arriving because Ed was so loved. The number of doctors willing to dedicate themselves to trying to save a dying man speaks to the regard in which Ed Ricketts was held.

“It is going to be difficult to write down the things about Ed Ricketts that must be written, hard to separate entities.”

Steinbeck is a famous author, but the Appendix presents him with a difficult challenge. While his novels may describe tragedies, horrors, and evil, trying to accurately convey the character of a friend is even more difficult. Ed Ricketts is not a work of fiction; since Steinbeck knew his friend so well, he understands that the full complexity of Ed Ricketts cannot be truly surmised in prose, yet he feels the responsibility to try nevertheless. He owes it to his friend to continue.

“He forbade his mind to think of metaphysical or extra-physical matters, and his mind refused to obey him.”

The complexity of Ed’s character is conveyed through nonlinear anecdotes. Ed’s identity as a scientist is made more complex by the challenge of mysticism. Ed found himself caught between his knowledge as a scientist and his habits as a human. He know the metaphysical could not harm him, yet his mind refused to fully give itself over to rationalism. This story shows Ed not only as a complicated man, but a human one, a man aware of his own contradictions.

“He simply manufactured the woman he wanted, rather like that enlightened knight in the Welsh tale who made a wife entirely out of flowers.”

A key element of Steinbeck’s portrayal of Ed Rickett’s is his relationship with women. Each woman, however, was more a reflection of Ed himself. He did not engage with the reality of women as individual people, but projected on them an imagined character with whom he could fall in love. This, in Steinbeck’s view, makes him almost like a character from folklore, presenting him as a man who is constantly falling in love with different products of his own imagination.