Ed Ricketts’s Backyard
Historic Cannery Row
You are looking at the backyard of Ed Ricketts’s lab, Pacific Biological Laboratories, where Ricketts lived and worked during the 1930 and 1940s. He collected and preserved tide pool plants and animals and sold them to schools around the world. What do you think that curious grid of concrete containers was used for? The containers held the larger animals Ricketts collected; sharks, ray and octopuses.
Farther back at the ocean’s edge lie tide pools that recall Ricketts’s belief in the interconnectedness of all species. Most biologists of Ricketts’s time were interested in learning about individual plants and animals, but Ricketts held an ecologically holistic view of the world. He was interested not only in where animals lived, but how they lived.
Look farther out, beyond the yard. The bay you’re looking at was declared the Edward F. Ricketts State Marine Conservation Area. In this preserve, guidelines limit fishing and kelp harvesting so that animals and plants can thrive and replenish their numbers.
Marker can be reached from Cannery Row.
Courtesy hmdb.org
