John Steinbeck and the Mystery of the Humboldt Squid
“Trying to remember the Gulf is like trying to recreate a dream,” John Steinbeck wrote about the Gulf of California.
On March 11, 1940, Steinbeck, his wife Carol, and his close companion, marine biologist Ed Ricketts, boarded an old sardine fishing boat in Monterey, California and set sail south to Mexico’s Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez. The 76-foot Western Flyer had been converted into a makeshift laboratory for scientific observation, loaded with preserving jars, long-handled dip nets, microscopes, and a hearty supply of beer. As the vessel slipped past the mouth of the bay and headed south into the open sea, it marked the beginning of a historic journey to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez.
“Let us go,” Steinbeck wrote about the voyage, in The Log from the Sea of Cortez, “into the Sea of Cortez, realizing that we become forever a part of it.”