About Ed Ricketts

Ed Ricketts (1897-1948) was an American marine biologist and ecologist.

He wrote (along with Jack Calvin) one of the world’s most famous marine biology texts, Between Pacific Tides. It was the first book to categorize animals by habitat. (Note: Ed Ricketts always spelled “tidepool” as one word. So, we do too.)

He lived and worked in Pacific Grove, Ca. and Monterey, Ca. and collected and studied creatures along the Pacific Coast of North and South America. He studied intertidal zone animals and collected specimens for Universities and others under his company name Pacific Biological Laboratories located on Monterey’s Cannery Row.

Ed Ricketts’ lab was located along Monterey’s bustling Cannery Row, a place made famous by its sardine catch. Ricketts’ lab included a living quarters upstairs and lab facilities downstairs that included holding tanks with access to Monterey Bay and processing work spaces to preserve the creatures that Ricketts collected. He held some of these creatures as a physical specimen catalog of the creatures along the Pacific Coast. He envisioned a specimen collection to rival the East Coast’s Wood’s Hole specimen collection. He also processed animals for distribution to customers, like Universities, for research and other purposes.

As a marine biologist and ecologist, Ricketts kept meticulous and extensive records of the habits and habitats of the creatures he collected and observed along the Pacific Coast. These records were processed through an intricate scientific system. It included field notes, typed collecting reports, color-coded 3×5 survey cards based on expeditions and geography, cross-referenced bibliography cards, and a 4×6 “Species card” that cataloged all information collected on the specific creatures. Ricketts called the Species Card the “Master Card of the System.”

Between Pacific Tides includes the Pacific coast from Sitka, Alaska to northern Mexico. But Ricketts planned to cover the entire northern Pacific, from Kamchatka to Peru, as the entries on the back of the species card, and in his expeditions notebook, show.

“ The eventual idea for the species card file would be to have an entry for every marine shore animal recorded in the area from Bering Sea to Ecuador, intertidally, or to a depth of 25 or 30fms.” (Ricketts, Permanent (Expedition) Notebook).

Ricketts’ science is very much connected to his philosophy of interconnection. According to William Gilly, Ricketts proposes a science of living relationships that predicts modern ecological views, now widespread. A view that “Everything impinges everything else, often into radically different systems.” (Gilly, 2006, unpublished presentation and K.A. Rodger (ed.), Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts)

Ed Ricketts was the inspiration for the character “Doc” in John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Ricketts was a good friend to John Steinbeck. As a matter of fact, a number of Steinbeck’s characters and places in Cannery Row can be gleaned through a careful reading of Ricketts’ notes, correspondences and collecting cards. Also, Ed Ricketts influenced the philosophy of Joseph Campbell.

Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck made a famous collecting trip on the Western Flyer, a sardine fishing boat, to the Sea of Cortez as described in the book they co-wrote, Sea of Cortez. On that trip, Ricketts used his scientific system to collect categorize and observe the inter-tidal creatures. They planned subsequent trips north to the islands off the coast of Canada.

Much has been written about Ed Ricketts and more information can be found at: