Behind Ricketts' Lab Canvas Print

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Sandwiched between the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Clement Hotel is a simple wooden building at 800 Cannery Row. It is commonly known as Ed Ricketts Lab, or more formally as the Pacific Biological Laboratories. Ricketts was the first marine biologist to document the ecosystems of Monterey Bay.

From a walkway around the Clement Hotel you can see the back area of the laboratory. On the left of this photo is what appears to be a barbecue, probably for entertaining the laboratory's many distinguished visitors (it became a private club after Ricketts death). On the right are holding tanks Ricketts used to store living specimens he collected from tide pools. I made this photo in September 2008.

Photo Copyright James B. Toy.

In the fall of 1959, Mr. Toy entered this world at a place called Carmel on California's Monterey Peninsula. Nine years later his family pulled up stakes for the rain-soaked city of Salem, Oregon where he never quite fit in. When he was 12, he and his mother viewed an exhibit of photographs by a Salem newspaper photographer, which inspired him to take his first photography class. During his teenage years he gradually developed his eye for composition and his skills with light and exposure. Though he did not pursue photography as a career, he has continued to document his observations of the world on small frames of film. In 1984, Mr. Toy and his wife Heidi returned to the Monterey Peninsula where his heart belonged. In 1997, on a bit of...