Ed Ricketts’s Backyard

In the backyard of Ed Ricketts’s lab, Pacific Biological Laboratories, where he lived and worked during the 1930 and 1940s, Ricketts collected and preserved tide pool plants and animals and sold them to schools around the world. A grid of concrete containers held the larger animals he collected, including sharks, ray and octopuses. At the ocean’s edge, tide pools recall Ricketts’s belief in the interconnectedness of all species. While most biologists of his time focused on individual plants and animals, Ricketts held an ecologically holistic view of the world and was interested not only in where animals lived, but how they lived. The bay beyond the yard was declared the Edward F. Ricketts State Marine Conservation Area, where guidelines limit fishing and kelp harvesting so that animals and plants can thrive and replenish their numbers.

Monterey, California · United States