Preferred Citation: . Scripps Institution of Oceanography; first fifty years. Los Angeles]:  W. Ritchie Press,  [1967] 1967. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt2b69q0kn/


 
A DEGREE OF IMPRACTICABILITY


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III. A DEGREE OF IMPRACTICABILITY

With Problems of Survival Solved for the time being by the guarantee of funds, the members of the Marine Biological Association were free to turn their attention to matters of long-range significance. One of these was the definition of the biological station's relationship to the University of California, another the selection of a permanent site in San Diego and the construction of a permanent building. E. W. Scripps, although he had said from the beginning that the real responsibility for the station's affairs should rest with “gentlemen and ladies who are interested in biology, and who have leisure time to fill out such as I have not got,”[1] became increasingly involved in making decisions affecting the station's future. In a letter which he drafted to be sent to the board of regents of the state university by the association, E. W. modestly described the extent of that involvement: “It is known that there are a number of public-spirited and wealthy citizens in this locality who will take sufficient interest in this work to provide all the necessary means, providing the University Regents will, by their action in the matter, recognize the value and use of the station by making it a part of, or branch department, of the University.”

Neither was there a lack of interest on the part of state and university officials. Since he had become the university's president several years before, Benjamin Ide Wheeler had been an informed, interested and cooperative supporter of Ritter's efforts. He had added the weight of his prestige to requests for funds in the San Pedro days, had made the initial and follow-up contacts with E. S. Babcock in securing the Coronado boathouse, had in short responded as quickly and fully as he could to all requests for assistance. With the university's limited funds he and the board of regents were not in a position to endow a permanent research institution on the scale


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Ritter envisioned. The amount of correspondence exchanged, however, makes it clear that both President Wheeler and California Governor George C. Pardee, who as a regent took an active personal part in university affairs, were aware of the station's progress toward permanency, and themselves seriously concerned with the university's role. “If the University could do it, no one would be more pleased than I,” wrote Pardee, “But I cannot help remembering that we have not money enough, and can't get it to do all the things for the University that we ought to do.”[2] Responsibility other than financial they willingly could and did assume.

In May, 1904, after numerous attempts to arrange such a conference, Governor Pardee met with E. W. Scripps and other Trustees of the San Diego Marine Biological Association at Miramar Ranch. As the guest of the Scrippses, the governor was able to judge firsthand of the sincerity of their interest. Evidently his judgment was favorable, for his earlier reluctance to commit the university to affiliation with so costly a scheme seems to have dissolved. “The comparative advantages of affiliation or union as a co-ordinate department of the State University were discussed,” report the minutes, “and it was the sense of the Governor and the Board that affiliation during the formative stage would give more flexibility of management, and that for a short time at least the union with the University should take this form.” By the end of the summer a committee of regents, composed of President Wheeler, Governor Pardee, Dr. Chester Rowell of Fresno and Judge Charles W. Slack of San Francisco, with Judge James W. McKinley of Los Angeles as Chairman, had been set up to “cooperate” with the board of the association in managing the business of the institution, until such time as the survey “be made a research department of the University coordinate with other departments of a similar nature.”[3] It was agreed that as a token of its interest the university would make loans of scientific equipment and a basic library during the summer sessions, and would provide for the publication of the results of the work.

Also approved at that May meeting were the Articles of Incorporation of the Marine Biological Association of San Diego (Appendix B), which restated the purposes contained in the association's charter, clarified such matters as legal responsibility and location, set limits on the number of directors and made provision for the transfer of the property to the Regents of the University of California, if at a


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later date this should become advisable. E. W. Scripps had urged the incorporation in order to “enable the Society to do business in a strictly business fashion, instead of conducting its affairs by the parliamentary rules of a tea party,”[4] and was no doubt relieved to see matters so clearly and legally stated.

It was always difficult for Scripps, the man of business, accustomed to contracts and sharply defined relationships and responsibilities, to work with the “professional men” whose world of pure science was to be embodied in the institution. But Drs. Baker and Ritter continued to be the only members of the association whose interest in the undertaking was strong enough to lead them to carry out the detailed work of its day to day operations. Homer Peters, as he regained his health, had also regained a healthy interest in his eastern business enterprises, and was spending less and less time in San Diego. Thus it fell to Baker and Ritter, tediously communicating by means of letters and an occasional telegram, jointly to make the decisions necessary to procure a boat, a building, and a sure future for the marine biological laboratory.

The matter of securing a boat suitable for the work of dredging was vital to the goals of the station, and seemingly the problem was easily solved when, in March of 1904, E. W. offered the use of his yacht, the Loma, for the purpose. The Loma, which had originally been built as a pilot boat, could easily be adapted to the institution's purposes. E. W. even agreed to provide, in addition to his regular subscription, the $1500 estimated to be necessary to install a gasoline engine in the Loma and equip her with scientific apparatus. The only qualification was that the yacht not be so greatly changed as to make it useless as a “pleasure boat,” for E. W. wanted to reserve the right to make personal use of the boat should he or his sons have need of it after the 1904 collecting was finished.

The refitting, which had seemed at the outset a simple matter, proved to be more complicated than anyone had anticipated. San Diego was as yet a small town, and though its good harbor had given rise to a small ship-building and ship-outfitting industry, the gasoline engine would have to be made to specification in San Francisco, as would the smaller engine needed for dredging. Finding too tedious the process of writing to Baker for information regarding the placement of the engines, supporting timbers and such, Ritter suggested that they have the Loma towed to San Francisco and complete the


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entire job of refitting there. Baker, undoubtedly glad to be relieved of the task of crawling around in the Loma's hold drawing diagrams, readily agreed, obtained Scripps' consent, and “saw the Loma outside the kelp” on May 8, 1904. Two weeks later Ritter met her in San Francisco and made arrangements to have her “put on the ways” in a few days time, confident that by midsummer she would be ready for scientific service as a collecting vessel.

The summer session at the Coronado laboratory got underway on May 16, and for a while Ritter talked of delaying his trip to San Diego until the work on the Loma was finished, but as June wore on and delays in the shipyard cropped up, he decided to proceed to San Diego ahead of the Loma and return to San Francisco whenever the work was completed.

Charles Kofoid had preceded the Ritters to Coronado by more than a month, and under his direction things were running smoothly by the time they arrived. Using his own power salmon boat, the St. Joseph, Manuel Cabral was making collections for the laboratory three days a week. The St. Joseph was even smaller than the Lura which had been used the year before, but as it had been decided to continue the work on plankton, the boat could meet the demands of the 1904 season.

In addition to a few visiting scientists and students, there was a regular staff of twelve, most of whom were continuing the work they had begun the year before. They received sincere encouragement, for one of Dr. Ritter's chief interests at this point was to have some of the results of the work published according to the association's arrangement with the university. This tangible evidence of progress, he felt, would attract the attention of scientists throughout the world to the organized survey they had begun. Hopefully such notice would develop into new forms of assistance, such as part-time use by the station of the U. S. Fisheries steamer Albatross. Ritter had spent the month of March, 1904, on board the Albatross directing investigations off the San Diego coast, and knew what immense value the use of a ship capable of dredging in great depths would be to the survey. So partly for this reason, by January of 1905 an entire volume of the University of California publications in zoology was issued, devoted solely to work carried on at San Diego, and another compilation was in progress.

Another step was taken in 1904 to put into practice a phase of the


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projected survey. This was the association's employment of B. M. Davis, who had spent two summers at Coronado, to stay on through the winter of 1904–1905 as resident naturalist. Under his supervision collections were now possible on a year-round basis. Davis set up a small laboratory at Roseville on Point Loma to which Cabral, who also lived in this part of San Diego, could conveniently deliver the material he collected on his weekly trips on the St. Joseph.

But what of the Loma, at nineteen tons so much better suited for the work of dredging? Why was the admittedly inadequate St. Joseph still being used? In the correspondence between Baker and Ritter in October and November of 1904, it becomes apparent that the Loma was still on the ways, and that despite six months in San Francisco shipyards she had not yet been transformed from a yacht into a collecting ship. Baker and Ritter were somewhat disturbed, but the explanations offered by the various San Francisco concerns seemed valid, and they patiently waited for the situation to resolve itself. Inevitably, however, E. W. Scripps became aware of the inordinate amount of time the process had taken, and patience was not one of E. W.'s virtues. On December 5 Dr. Fred fearfully forwarded to Ritter the letter he had received that morning from Scripps:

My dear Sir:

“It has been a long time since I have had any report from the boat “LOMA.” I cannot believe that any valid excuse can be offered by the contractors who have had the boat in charge.

(Here followed a lengthy estimate of the financial loss caused by the delay) … Beyond this, there has been the great annoyance which I have suffered, and which any practical business man would suffer, on account of a treatment so disrespectful as to be equivalent almost to a gratuitous insult.

I do not express this feeling any more from the standpoint of proprietorship in the “LOMA” than from a membership in the Association for which the boat is being fitted out. I am unwilling that the present contractors should have anything more to do with the “LOMA” …

I do not wish you to suppose for a moment that I place any blame upon you, or Prof. Ritter. I consider that all of us have equally been treated in an unfair and unbusinesslike way. I suppose that the contractors have rather presumed upon the fact that you were professional men, and have considered it safe to impose upon me for that reason …

… Your sincerely,
E. W. Scripps


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Baker was afraid that the bungling of the Loma affair would jeopardize their whole relationship with Scripps, but Ritter had more confidence in the staying-power of E. W.'s commitment. “The portentous condition of our affairs that has developed in the last few days certainly disturbs me a good deal,” he wrote Baker, “but I am by no means frightened into entire consternation over it and for this reason: unless I have wholly misjudged E. W. Scripps' character as a whole, he is not the man to be diverted from a main purpose by things of incidental moment. I have so much confidence in his comprehension of, and belief in our scheme as a whole, that I feel pretty sure he will regard this as merely of incidental significance, especially if we are so fortunate as to conduct our end of the affair with wisdom.”[5]

In a month or two the storm had subsided; the engines had been tested and approved, and the Loma had been safely returned to her berth in the San Diego harbor, ready for use the following summer. But the seas were not yet calm. The cost of the work on the Loma exceeded the original $1500 estimate by over $2000, and E. W. grudgingly paid the difference, muttering the while that the association would have to make it good. “I have been so schooled and trained in business that I have acquired the vulgar habits of my vulgar class,” wrote E. W. to Ritter of the matter, “and, as a consequence, I am more provoked by any sort of a business mistake, bookkeeping or otherwise, than I could possibly be exhilarated by the feeling that I had helped to discover ten thousand new kinds of bugs.”[6]

There also had been a misunderstanding that year over the designing and building of a more adequate laboratory. The Coronado Beach Company had added an extra room to the boathouse for the summer of 1904, and the supporting piles had been braced to make the building more stable, but none of the association's members doubted that after 1904 new facilities must be found or constructed. A makeshift laboratory might suffice for a group of loosely associated individual researchers, but for an ambitious organized survey such as that planned for the station, working conditions must be as nearly ideal as possible. Thus at the May, 1904 meeting of the trustees Ritter had been requested to “have plans drawn for a building large enough to meet the requirements of the association when fully


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developed but on such a plan that a part can be constructed for immediate use, and added to as the necessity may demand.”

Apparently Ritter took more seriously the former clause of this request, while Scripps was especially concerned with the latter, for when Ritter presented the plans drawn by the university architect it was evident that there had been a lack of communication. These plans, submitted in the fall of 1904, called for an imposing two-story edifice costing at least $50,000, and though Scripps could admit that it was “admirably designed, in the interior, for the purposes it is to be devoted to,” he had strong reservations. These he expressed in a four-page letter to J. B. Mac Mullen, board member of the association who was planning to publish the plans in his San Diego Union:

Personally, I should have preferred a design which would have permitted us to put up a part of the structure for immediate use at no great cost, so that, later, additions could be made in such a way as to cause the whole building to present an attractive and creditable architectural appearance … I believe that it would be difficult to, at this time, raise enough money by public contribution to build and complete such a structure as we should have in the end. Most of the present money for this institution comes from three or four people … We all know that the scale of expenses of a household, or a business institution, is largely fixed by the size and style of that domicile. It seems to me that the going expenses of a concern housed in such a building as proposed would be manifold larger than the annual expense of the Institution at present … My first feeling on seeing the plans was that of disappointment. It seemed to me that the scheme was developing a degree of impracticability from a business point of view.

(Nov. 23, 1904)

This did not mean that Scripps did not hope that the institution would someday be housed in such a building, or in even larger, more well-equipped facilities. But it was his belief, which he repeatedly expressed, that the station should start out small, that the important thing in the beginning should be men and their work, not material assets.

At the time the plans were presented the building site had not even been finally selected. During the 1904 summer session Ritter, his staff and advisors had come to the conclusion that La Jolla, then a small village fourteen miles north of San Diego, though legally a part of


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the city, afforded the most advantageous seaside location. But the association was still negotiating with city officials for a plot of land in the city park on Alligator Head near the La Jolla Cove. Until a desirable site was definitely leased or deeded to the association there was no point in planning a permanent stone or cement structure. Ritter promptly concurred. “The plan … was intended to show as nearly as possible what would be desirable, and to serve as a basis for further consideration,” he wrote to Baker soon after the controversy began. “I understood all along that there might very well be a decided discrepancy between what the laboratory should be and what it could be, at the outset at least.”[7]

So a simple plan for a small frame building was drawn up by San Diego architects Hebbard and Gill, with the help of Professor Kofoid and other association members, and in April of 1905 bids were taken. The city council had by this time granted permission for the association to use a portion of the park on Alligator Head, and indeed the La Jolla Improvement Society raised almost all of the $1000 it took to construct the first laboratory designed expressly for the uses of the Marine Biological Institution.

* * *

Ritter, Baker, Scripps—all those connected with the research station—must have felt they had seized hold of a many-headed Hydra in the shape of the Marine Biological Institution. There were problems all along the way, countless small matters to attend to with each major decision, inevitable errors in judgment and execution to be corrected. The signing of leases and the paying of bills were indeed part of a world in which Baker and Ritter were not at home, and E. W. Scripps would have had little idea what to do with the material the Loma dredged up. None of these people were prisoners of minutiae, however, and the fact that they kept resolutely pushing their plans forward, despite setbacks, indicates that there was a great amount of common ground. Essentially this was the belief they shared in the wealth of benefits science could bring to mankind; more specifically it was their conviction that the institution stood to make a unique contribution in exploring an almost unknown realm.

The guiding beliefs and over-all methods that were to be the mark of the survey are best set forth in the early years in A General


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Statement of the Ideas and Present Aims of the Marine Biological Association of San Diego, written by Ritter as the introduction to the first volume of publications on the San Diego work, and re-issued as a pamphlet in April, 1905. There is no better way to recapture the spirit of the undertaking than to read Ritter's own words on the subject:

The Idea of a Marine Biological Survey

The investigations on the coast of Southern California now having been in progress for several years, and their continuance being assured for a few more years at least, it seems fitting that this first volume of results should be introduced by some statement of the general ideas animating the undertaking, and of the efforts being made, and means available to realize these ideas. Investigations in marine biology, intensive rather than extensive in character … is the keynote of the idea. An immediate consequence of the adoption of such an idea as a rule of action, has been the necessity of making a clear distinction between marine biology, and general biology prosecuted by researches on marine organisms

The aim as formulated in the articles of incorporation of the Association is, “To make a Biological Survey of the waters of the Pacific adjacent to the Coast of Southern California.” …

The Area to be Surveyed

The funds available being small, an important and everpresent practical question is that of fixing limits. One of the first of these was that of limiting the territory to be surveyed …

It is, of course, not to be supposed that a stone wall has been built around this area … nothing is clearer than that complete knowledge of it is impossible without extending the explorations widely beyond it. That it makes a well defined base of operations is about the view we take of it.

The qualifications of the region are: a position well to the south; a considerable extent of continental shelf, presenting a large diversity of bottom, with numerous islands and shoals; proximity to oceanic depths and other truly oceanic conditions; a favorable climate; a large variety of shore line; and accessibility through sea ports and railroads … A fundamental element in investigations of the sort contemplated is continuousness of the field work. Data gathering must go on throughout the year at frequent intervals. The weather here offers little obstacle to this …


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La Jolla, the suburb of San Diego at which the laboratory is located, is on a rocky point jutting into the open sea with water of 200 fathoms attainable inside of five miles; so the ecological problems of oceanic plankton, and of bottom-forms can be here attacked under peculiarly favorable conditions …

There can be no doubt that deep sea and longshore investigations have not yet been brought together to the extent they ought to be.

The Initial Step

The first step in such a survey would obviously be to find out what plants and animals inhabit the area; to establish a speaking aquaintance, as one may say, with the organisms that are later to be more intimately known. So far this has absorbed most of the effort, and it will of necessity demand the continuance of much effort for a long time in the future … The entire fauna and flora must be recorded in such a way as to make the records a good foundation for the broader and deeper studies to follow.

Order of Advance on the Numerous Lines of Investigation

A natural sequence, within certain limits, will establish an order … For example, the species representing a given pelagic group having been got well in hand, a natural second step would be the determination of the seasonal distribution of the group, since the study of the collections for the taxonomy would surely bring together, incidentally, considerable data on this problem. Following close upon the treatment of seasonal distribution would come that of horizontal and vertical distribution, the chorology; and inseparably linked with these would be the problems of food and reproduction; and these would lead again to problems of migration, with their intimate dependence upon temperature and other environmental factors. And here, completeness of knowledge being ever the watchword, the demand would arise for applying experimental and statistical methods in the effort to get at the deeper significance of the facts observed, and generalizations reached from the observational investigations. The chain of questions hanging one to another is endless and, of course, completeness of knowledge in a literal sense, is an unattainable ideal.

Knowledge of the Physical Conditions of the Area

It does not need to be said, in the light of general biological conceptions reigning in this day, that an aim at comprehensiveness of knowledge cannot for a moment neglect the physical conditions under which organisms live … Conditions of the water as to temperature, and


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currents; mineral, gaseous, and albuminoid content, etc., must be known at the particular time and place to which the biological studies pertain, and no general knowledge of this character can suffice. Physics, chemistry, and hydrography must, therefore, be integral parts of such a survey.

Instrumentalities for Prosecuting such a Survey

It is obvious that no small outlay of money would be essential for even a good beginning; and that considerable progress in it could be made only with large expenditures for both equipment and operation …

Necessity of a Salaried Staff

Obviously, there must be coordinated effort of numerous special investigators to make any headway. How is this to be secured? In only one way: by paying for it. The diversity of talent and training called for, and the prolonged period of service requisite, preclude the possibility of success on any other basis … the only way by which such a survey can be carried on with any considerable measure of success is through an organized, salaried staff. This, of course, means a large and continuous expenditure … fortunately lessened by the circumstance that while the staff in the aggregate would be rather large, only a portion, and in the main a comparatively small portion, of the time of each member would be demanded …

Remarks on the Present Status of Marine Biology in General

Situated as our station is, on a biologically almost unknown part of a little known ocean, our first concern, chronologically, must be with local conditions and problems … we yet venture to look somewhat beyond these limits … Looking over the whole domain, one sees that while certain geographical regions … have been cultivated, intensely even, in certain particulars, when attention is directed to large problems rather than to space areas, the thoroughly subjugated portions are exceedingly small …

… When viewing this whole field of knowledge, and the means and methods of investigation, one must be struck by the prevailing uniformity and inadequacy of the existing marine stations for coping with the situation … They have been and are, with few exceptions, primarily resorts for individual investigators of specific biological problems, and not for systematically attacking the problems of marine biology proper.

I would wish to guard myself without fail against being understood as passing adverse criticism upon these laboratories … No other instrumentality has contributed so largely to the promotion of general biology …


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We are becoming ever more impressed as knowledge advances, with the truth that no segment of the phenomena presented by an animal, morphological or physiological, is fully understood until it is regarded in the light of the entire life career of that animal. We are likewise in a position to see as never before what must be done to attain this fullness of knowledge. We must, in the first place, learn by observation all the facts of the life history of the animal. In the second place, we must make use at every point possible of a combination of observation and experimentation for the interpretation of these facts …

We must learn, through careful and extended observation of the animals in nature, just what it is we have to interpret. Need for a kind of marine biological research not specially felt a few years ago is now becoming urgent …

The portions of Nature unsubjugated by science are vast—it almost seems as though they grow vaster the longer we work at them; and one of the great questions science has ever before her is that of making such effort as she is able to put forth count for the most. One way of doing this is by giving good heed, not alone to the talents and tastes of workers, and money endowments, but as well to the opportunities held out by Nature herself.

The conditions placed by Nature before us mark unmistakably the road we ought to take.


A DEGREE OF IMPRACTICABILITY
 

Preferred Citation: . Scripps Institution of Oceanography; first fifty years. Los Angeles]:  W. Ritchie Press,  [1967] 1967. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt2b69q0kn/