The Log From The Sea of Cortez

From the outset, the expedition defines its work as broad ecological survey rather than trophy-hunting. They move from station to station, listing whole assemblages, surfaces, and conditions, then relating co-occurrence and abundance to tide, current, temperature, substrate, and surf. As they proceed on their voyage, Steinbeck emphasizes the interconnection and ecology of all life.

The crew view schools and communities as operative units, rather than collections of individual specimens. In San Carlos, Steinbeck describes this stance in particular, stating that the crew “cannot conceive of this intricacy until [they] are able to think of the school as an animal itself, reacting with all its cells to stimuli which perhaps might not influence one fish at all” (199, emphasis added). The fish are not individuals in the survey, but part of interconnected ecosystems. The emphasis falls on the common, the recurrent, the structuring relations that form dependable patterns. Survival is not a property of isolated organisms alone, but of linked units, from schools and reefs to whole shores and currents, which is why the narrative focuses on the ecosystems as a whole.

The voyage consistently locates humans inside the same kind of interconnected ecological system.