The Hopkins Seaside Laboratory (1892-1917)
CHAPTER 6
AS FOR THE GATHERING OF FISHES
According to A. G. Madden (1898), the boat equipment associated with the facility was comprised of one small rowboat and one small sailboat, with the sailboat being too small for any effective trawling or dredging, except in near shore shallow water. As far as the requirements of most of the student and researcher needs, the ability to collect in deeper water was not necessary as the flora and fauna that were accessible from shore provided plenty of material, besides that which was accessible from shallow water using a small boat.(1) As for the gathering of fishes, there was located just a half mile east of the laboratory, a village full of Chinese fishermen who did much of the collecting.(2) With that, our first mention of Chinese fishermen, we now turn our attention to understanding and appreciating this fishing village that lay on the border of the city limits of Monterey and Pacific Grove.
Pacific Grove's Chinese Fishing Village.
Photograph courtesy of California State Library, Sacramento, California
THE CHINESE FISHING VILLAGE
One of the earliest descriptions of Pacific Grove’s Chinese fishing village was provided in the report prepared by David Starr Jordan as a part of his survey of the fisheries of the Pacific Coast in 1880 for the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries. In this report Jordan writes the following words describing this fishing village:
The colony at Punta Alones, which is a mile and a half west of Monterey, settled there in 1864 and consists of 25 fishermen. This is a somewhat larger colony than the one at Pescadero. Some of the women here go fishing with the men. Others stay at home and dress the fish, which operation is aided by a heavy hatchet like knife. One of the Chinamen at Punta Alones is an American citizen and speaks English well. Others have been hotel cooks. This colony compares favorably with any other on the coast. They ship daily to San Francisco, in fine weather, from 200 to 800 pounds of fish. The members of this colony, as well as those at Pescadero, dry and ship to China an unknown quantity of abalone meat and sell the shells. At certain seasons they also dry many tons of different devil-fish, squids, etc.(3)
In a news article published in the journal Science in 1892, titled The Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, David Starr Jordan described the first summer of courses, the ongoing research activities and commented on the Portuguese and the Chinese fishermen who collected specimens for research purposes: As I write, a grampus 12 feet in length is brought in a dray-wagon by a Portuguese fisherman from Monterey, while a constant stream of objects of interest comes in from the Chinese fishing camp at Point Alones.(4)
Besides comments provided by Jordan, several publications about Hopkins Seaside Laboratory mention the Chinese fishing village and the fishermen who helped collect objects of interest. (5),(6),(7)
A 1902 publication describing the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory mentioned the Chinese fishing community and a particular individual who collected animals. MacFarland writes: "In one of these coves, fifteen minutes walk along the shore from the laboratory, is located the picturesque and odoriferous Chinese fishing village which has proven the means of securing much of value from the waters of the bay...many of these fishermen can be turned into excellent collectors, if the financial consideration be large enough. However, their regular fishing is so profitable—especially during the salmon season—that it often requires an infinite deal of patience and perseverance to get anything from them at all. It was through the most intelligent of these fishermen, Ah Tuck Lee, that Dr. G. C. Price secured the first embryos of Polistotrema (Bdellostoma) stoutii, [hagfish embryos] followed later by Dean, Ayers and Doflein."(8)
With the above paragraph we are introduced to two subjects that present the context for the paragraphs to come, First, a Chinese fisherman by the name of Tuck Lee, (full name: Quock Tuck Lee) and second, the quest by the investigative scientist conducting research at the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory for what turn out to be, even to this day, extremely elusive hagfish embryos. This quest to obtain for research purposes, these highly elusive hagfish embryos, was directed by the comparative embryologists of the time who wished to broaden their understanding of early vertebrate evolution. Let us first become familiar with what is known of the history of Quock family, which includes Tuck Lee and how this family of Chinese immigrants came to reside along the central coast of California.
Pacific Grove's Chinese Fishing Village.
Photograph courtesy of California State Library, Sacramento, California
THE QUOCK (KWOK) FAMILY
In the mid-1800s, a young Chinese woman from the southern part of the Kwangtung Province named Loy So Mai, and her husband Bo Quock, joined a group of other Chinese who left China and immigrate to America.(9) The party set sail for America as part of a group of five (according to Lee, 2006),(10) or seven junks (according to Chen, 1980),(11) briefly stopping in the Philippines to further prepare for their extended overseas journey.(12) When the junks headed toward San Francisco, a storm hit off the coast of California, destroying several of the ships. Of the five or seven junks (depending on which historical account is correct) that departed from China, two landed in California.
According to Chen (1980) one junk landed in Caspar Beach, Mendocino County in 1854 and the second one landed near the mouth of the Carmel River in Monterey County, presumably in 1854.(13) According to Ben Hoang, the grandson of Quock Mei, in an interview conducted by Judy Yung in Monterey on November 27, 1983, there were two fishing boats that arrived in 1852 near the mouth of the Carmel River in Monterey County carrying a total sixteen passengers.(14)
While the actual date of their arrival and the exact number of junks that arrived at each location may never be confirmed, what has been told was that the junk on which Loy So Mai and her husband Bo Quock were onboard, shipwrecked near Point Lobos a small inlet south of Monterey Bay.(15) According to the collective family history of the descendants, a Rumsien tribe of native Americans living in the area found the Quocks, and their Chinese companions, and took them into their homes to recover from the wreck and the arduous journey itself. These Chinese families, cast ashore on a shipwrecked junk, settled in the region and become fisher people. This small group of Chinese immigrants learned from the local people and shared their own knowledge about fish drying and preservation.(16) Quock Mui, the first child (second child of four children according to Ben Hoang, the grandson of Quock Mei, in the interview conducted by Judy Yung) of Loy So Mai and Bo Quock, was born in a fishing cabin at Point Lobos on August 13, 1859 (August 1858 according to the 1900 Federal Census) and believed to have been the first documented Chinese female born in California. Next, Loy So Mai and her husband Bo Quock had a second daughter born to them, Quock Sing Hing. Loy So Mai and her husband Bo Quock, not only had their daughters Quock Mui and Quock Sing Hing, born to them, but also had a son, Quock Tuck Lee, who was born at either one of three locations, the Point Lobos Chinese fishing community south of Carmel, the Pescadero Chinese fishing community located in Pebble Beach or the Point Alones Chinese fishing community in Pacific Grove, California.
QUOCK TUCK LEE
The earliest documented information related to Tuck Lee is a small comment published in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin in 1888: Ah Tuck Lee, the only Chinese voter in Monterey county, will cast his first vote in November for Cleveland and Thurman. Tuck Lee was born in Monterey and follows fishing for a living. He is bright and can speak English and Spanish.(17)
The next bit of information related to Tuck Lee was provided by twelfth census of the United States for the year 1900, where one finds Lee living with his wife and three daughters at the Point Alones fishing village in Pacific Grove, California. According to the census Quock Tuck Lee was born in California in February of 1866, some seven years after the birth of his sister, Quock Mui. His wife, listed as Ying Tom Shee, was born in China in 1872, immigrated to the United States in 1880 and married in 1884. According to the census, the Lee’s had been married for sixteen years. The census makes record of Quock Tuck Lee and Ying Tom Shee’s three daughters, Ti Ti Kwok [Quock] born in March of 1885, Oy Kwok [Quock] born in May 1886 and Fung Kwok [Quock] and March 1890, presumably at the Point Alones Chinese fishing village.
Thus, from what information that has been gathered to date, suggests that for an unknown number of years, Tuck Lee, along with his wife and their children, resided at the Point Alones Chinese fishing village. One can only wonder if it was not a young Tuck Lee that David Starr Jordan refers to in his U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries Report of 1880 in his sentence: “One of the Chinamen at Punta Alones is an American citizen and speaks English well.”(18) If such is the case, then it’s quite possible that, at the time of the 1900 census, Tuck Lee had been living in the village for over 24 years.
Photograph by Franz Doflein. Obtained from Von den Antillen zum fernen Westen: reiseskizzen eines naturforschers. XII. Kapitel Die Meeresfauna von Kalifornien. Doflein, Franz. (1900). Jena : Gustav Fischer
QUOCK TUCK LEE & HAGFISH EMBRYOS
With that bit of introduction to Quock Tuck Lee, we now turn our attention to describing the biology of hagfish, and the research interests of a select group of scientists, those comparative embryologists, interested in understanding vertebrate evolution. The following paragraphs describing hagfish is taken from the book Fish Stories Alleged and Experienced: With a Little History Natural and Unnatural, written by Charles Frederick Holder and David Starr Jordan, and published in 1909.
HAGFISH
The hagfish or slime-eel looks very much like a lamprey, which is indeed its nearest neighbor in the system of classification. It is long, slim, cylindrical, worm-shaped, without limbs and without jaws, without eyes and without scales. Its skin is loose, like a scarf, and its surface is covered with slime. The different species live in the cold seas, Arctic and Antarctic, and some of them go down to great depths. One species is common along the coast of California and is abundant in Monterey Bay. To this point naturalists from the east and from Europe have sometimes come to the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory of Stanford for the special purpose of studying its structure and development. It lays its large egg, inclosed in a flattish egg-case, on the bottom of the sea. To each end of the egg are attached barbed threads, which serve to anchor the eggs to the bottom of the sea. Curiously enough, the male fish at once proceeds to devour these eggs wherever he can find them. For a long time all the eggs, which were secured, were found in the stomachs of the male fish.
The hagfish is the only fish which lives wholly as a parasite. It fastens itself to the throat or eye or other soft place of a large fish; with the knife-like hooked teeth on its tongue it rasps a hole into the muscles of the fish. It then proceeds to devour the great lateral muscles which constitute the great part of the flesh of the fish, always avoiding the nerves and never breaking through into the body cavity itself. I have seen large fishes still alive with half their weight gone, living husks, floating about in the sea. When one of these husks is lifted from the water, the hagfishes inside of it slip out almost instantly and hide themselves in the sea. The hagfishes are especially likely to attack fishes held in the gill nets, and in this way they do considerable injury. They were hated of the fishermen until Pacific Grove was made the seat of a scientific station, and scientific men as George Clinton Price, Bashford Dean, Franz Doflein and Howard Ayres, ready to pay more for these slimy, repulsive creatures than good fishes are worth. Now the pursuit of the hagfish at Pacific Grove has become something of an industry of itself. The California hagfish is plum-color or purplish, and on the sides of its neck it has about ten gill holes, instead of seven, found in lampreys. Other hagfishes, similar in character, are found in Chili, Japan and New Zealand…
By the study of such forms we get the key to the understanding of the complex structures of the higher forms.(19) As previously mentioned, hagfish embryos are notoriously difficult to locate in the marine environment within which inhabit. As described by Nicholas D. Holland (2007): "In spite of more than a century of effort by numerous biologists, hagfish embryos have only rarely come to hand. In California, embryos of E. stouti were first collected from Monterey Bay in the closing years of the nineteenth century when several biologists—most notably Bashford Dean of Columbia University—dredged up embryo-containing eggs with the help of the local Chinese fishermen. When the bottom-dwelling hagfish were hooked, they secreted copious mucus that sometimes ensnared deposited eggs, such that the fish, slime and eggs could be brought to the surface together." (20)
Those scientists mentioned by Holder and Jordan, who were successful in obtaining hagfish embryos from the waters of the Monterey Bay during the 1890’s, George C. Price, Howard Ayers, Franz Doflein, and Bashford Dean, acquired them through the skillful efforts of Tuck Lee. Professor MacFarland mentions that Dr. George C. Price, Professor of Zoology, Stanford University, was the first to secure embryos from Tuck Lee.(21) Next, Howard Ayers, then Director of the Lake Laboratory, Milwaukee, Wisconsin visiting the lab in 1893, secured several embryos through the efforts of Tuck Lee. According to Ayers (1894): On arriving at the station, it became at once apparent that I should depend upon the Chinese fishermen for the collection of my material.(22)
Next, Bashford Dean, a Professor of Zoology, Columbia University, New York who visited the lab during the summer of 1896 and 1899, obtained hagfish embryos during his first summer visits. Dean obtained, through the services of Tuck Lee and the Chinese fishermen from the Point Alones fishing village, a total of approximately 800 eggs, the largest number of embryos to ever be collected from the Monterey Bay. To Dean’s good fortune approximately 150 of those 800 eggs contained developing embryos. On the basis of these specimens, Dean was able to provide over 130 drawings outlining the stages of development of Eptatretus stouti.(23)
According to Holland (2007): "These embryos, which Dean studied primarily as whole mounts, were the basis for his extensive monograph on hagfish embryology, which is still the definitive treatment of the subject."(24) Dean’s acquisition of hagfish embryos was followed by Franz Doflein, a scientist visiting from the University of Munich, Germany, during the summer of 1898, who obtained several embryos of Eptatretus stouti through the services of Tuck Lee.(25) These comparative embryologists who were successful in obtaining hagfish embryos, conducted their scientific investigations and published their research findings in scientific journals. Within many of these scientists published writings’, there is mention, and often much praise, of the fishing skills and character of the Chinese fisherman, Tuck Lee (Doflein, 1900),(26) (Dean, 1903, 1904),(27),(28) (MacFarland, 1902),(29) (Greene, 1925).(30)
According to these researchers, it is Tuck Lee who possessed the necessary skill to locate and retrieve the very elusive and much coveted specimens of hagfish embryos. In fact, through the efforts of this skillful and knowledgeable Chinese fisherman, Tuck Lee, was secured, for the noted naturalist Bashford Dean, the most important collection of specimens of hagfish embryos that exist to this day. Much of our current understanding of hagfish embryology is the result of the embryos that Tuck Lee and the Point Alones Chinese community collected for Dean and other scientist who were conducting research at the Hopkins Sea Side Laboratory.
In his writing, Dean (1904) explains that his success at obtaining this collection of embryos is clearly the result of the skillful efforts of Tuck Lee: "Hitherto the bay of Monterey has provided all myxinoid embryos recorded, but in the latter locality, one may add in parenthesis, the collection of hag-fish eggs has been due to the labors of practically a single fisherman, Ah Tack Lee, whose energetic help is thus almost a sine qua non."(31) According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of “sine qua non” is the following: as being something absolutely indispensable or essential. Not only were Tuck Lee’s efforts indispensable and essential for locating hagfish embryos for Dean, but his skill also proved critical in efforts associated with locating the eggs of a cartilaginous fish, known as Chimaera.
BASHFORD DEAN, TUCK LEE AND CHIMERA EGGS
The following opening remarks written by William K. Gregory in The Bashford Dean Memorial Volume (1930) provide a grand description of a summer day that revolved around the efforts of Bashford Dean, the wife of Tuck Lee and the “zoological treasures” that were the results of Tuck Lee’s fishing skills.
"On a certain bright California day in the summer of 1899, I looked out of the window from my table at the Hopkins Marine Laboratory at Pacific Grove and saw Dr. Bashford Dean swinging rapidly up the path leading to the laboratory. A few steps in front of him was a dumpy little Chinese woman, the wife of Ah Tak the fisherman, and from Dean's square shoulder to hers stretched a stout bamboo pole. Between them was slung a large tin can full of water and evidently containing some zoological treasure brought in from the waters of the bay by Ah Tak. I rushed out to meet them and assisted in turning the can gently over so that its contents poured slowly into a large wooden trough containing fresh seawater. Then out came a living Silver Shark (Chimaera colliei) glistening in silver and black, waving its gossamer wing-like pectorals and staring vacantly with great round eyes. At that moment I caught for the first time a spark from Dean's ardor, which had already sent him into many parts of the world in pursuit of chimaeroid fishes and their development.”(32)
As described by Dean, "The first eggs of Chimaera were obtained on the California coast during the latter part of the same summer (1896). The writer is greatly indebted to President Jordan for his invitation to visit the Hopkins Marine Laboratory at Monterey, and for his suggestion as to the value of the Chinese fisher-people as zoological collectors. Among the fishermen Ah Tack Lee was found to be of the utmost service, skillful [sic], persevering, accurate in locating Chimaera grounds, and keen in observing. He had even noticed that Chimaera has the curious habit of carrying temporarily its pair of eggs hung freely in the water attached only by elastic threads, and that the terminal filament of the egg-case is provided with an end-bulb which secures its attachment." (33)
With the help of Tuck Lee and the Chinese fishermen from the Point Alones fishing village, Dean took fishing trips off the coast each day. In doing so, he obtained more than three hundred Chimaera fish. Of these three hundred Chimaera, thirty females contained eggs, and among these eggs were presented the stages of early development. To obtain the later stages of development, a hatching case was stocked with eggs and held at three fathoms of water, directly off the beach of Hopkins Seaside Laboratory. From these submersed eggs, several later stages of development were acquired.(34)
RAY LYMAN WILBUR, TUCK LEE AND CHIMERA EGGS
In the publication Development of a Chimeroid, which discusses his research findings associated with Chimaera development, Bashford Dean expresses his indebtedness to, not only the Directors of Hopkins Seaside Laboratory and David Starr Jordan but also his indebtedness to both Ray L. Wilber and Ah Tuck Lee.
"The writer is greatly indebted to President Jordan and to the directors of the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory, at Pacific Grove, for many courtesies extended him during two summers at the laboratory; and to Dr. Ray L. Wilbur for much generous and skilful [sic] cooperation in securing material from the Chinese fisher-people during the years 1897, 1898 and 1899. Dr. Wilbur made numerous trips from San Francisco to Monterey during this time, and to his interest in my work and to his boundless energy I am indebted for many of the later and rarer stages of this interesting fish. To Ah Tack Lee, most skillful and intelligent of local fishermen, I owe my best thanks for his services as a collector."(35)
At this point, you might be asking yourself, who was Ray Lyman Wilbur, and what connection does he have to the history of Hopkins Seaside Laboratory. RL Wilbur was a Stanford undergraduate (1892-1896) and graduate (1897), who spent three summers at the Seaside Laboratory as part of his program in the Department of Physiology. Wilbur received from Stanford University, a B. A. degree in 1896 and an M. A. degree in 1897; he then studied at Cooper Medical College, receiving a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1899. RL Wilbur then served as the Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1911 to 1916, and as President of Stanford University from 1916 until 1943. During his time as President of Stanford University, Ray Lyman Wilbur also served as Secretary of the Interior of the United States (1929-1933) during the Hoover administration. Beyond these accomplishments, Wilbur served as Chancellor of the University from 1943 until his death in 1949. Ray Lyman Wilbur, Stanford's third president, described in his memoir his summers at the seaside laboratory as being one of the great experiences of my University career.(36)
During the time spent at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory as a Stanford undergraduate, Wilbur assisted the research interests of Bashford Dean and his efforts to acquire “hen sharks” (i.e. chimeras). In his memoirs Wilber writes the following of his friendly interactions with Tuck Lee in the summer of 1896 in relation to this effort: "In my collecting work for the Seaside Laboratory one of my best friends was Ah Tock, a Chinese fisherman near Monterey. He was a skillful fisherman and collector. I paid him 10 cents a piece for "hen sharks." Once he had a field day and brought in seventy-one of them. His boat was loaded down with them, his lines were broken. It was a sight. This was before the days of vitamins and shark livers. We were looking for eggs maturing within the body of the shark." (37)
Also within his memoirs, Wilber writes that in December 1898, directly after his wedding, he and his new bride Marguerite (May Blake) took their honeymoon in Pacific Grove, which included a visit with Tuck Lee. Wilber writes the following of their visit to the Chinese village: Since I wanted to start in to collect some specimens anyhow, one of the first things I did was take my bride over to the Chinese fishing village, near Monterey, to see Ah Tock. My Chinese friends gathered about us. Mrs. Ah Tock was particularly pleased and [indicating Marguerite] asked me “Him your wife?” When I answered yes, she said, “Ah, him very nice, you smart!” To all of which we agreed.(38)
In 1905, the Pacific Improvement Company, the owners of the property where the village was located and to whom the villagers paid rent, were negotiating with the Chinese of the Point Alones fishing village for their relocating the community along the beach near Seaside, California.(39) Faced with a February 1906 deadline and no agreed upon site for relocation, the Chinese returned to the Pacific Improvement Company and requested an extension which the company granted. During these negotiations the village was led by a group of America-born Chinese, one of whom was Quock Tuck Lee. A tenacious opponent of the Pacific Improvement Company’s efforts to relocate the village, Tuck Lee was arrested a number of times and named in many of the lawsuits filed by the Company.(40)
On the night of May 16, 1906, a disastrous fire swept through the Point Alones Chinese fishing village destroying almost every existing structure. Regulations were promptly put into place that prohibited the Chinese community from rebuilding their homes on the property. A few Chinese families relocated to McAbee Beach, but Tuck Lee resisted any such move for as long as possible.(41) According to a newspaper article, the Evening News, San Jose California, dated May 16, 1907, Tuck Lee would be the last resident to leave the fishing village: Only one Chinaman remains at the old Pacific Grove Chinatown, and that is Tuck Lee, says the Monterey Cypress. All the others have been ejected and have take up their home at McAbeeville. Many of the old shacks have been removed from the once popular bathing beach. Tuck Lee has promised to move, and in a few days will do so. As soon as he moves all of the old remaining shack will be razed and the grounds cleaned. The Pacific Improvement Company will then turn the grounds over to the Regents of the University of California, who will begin the erection of the buildings for the biological college, which will cost $200,000.(42)
Almost exactly 365 days after the 1906 fire, Tuck Lee, the last to depart the Chinese fishing village, left Point Alones forever. The construction of a “biological college” by the University of California at Point Alones never commenced and the property sat vacant for more than ten years.
RAY LYMAN WILBUR, JACQUES LOEB AND EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
Jacques Loeb was a brilliant general physiologist who, as a visiting scientist, maintained an investigators room at Hopkins Seaside Laboratory during the winter of 1898 and 1900. During his first visit, Loeb conducted an experimental physiology demonstration that applied an engineering approach to scientific research and made a lasting impression on the young Ray Lyman Wilbur. The following paragraph from Wilbur’s memoirs offers his personal recollection of Jacques Loeb’s visit during the winter of 1898.
It was during that year (Feb.11, 1898) that Dr. Jacques Loeb, professor of physiology at the University of Chicago, paid a visit to Stanford. He was planning to carry on some special work at the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory at Pacific Grove. He gave us a fine demonstration of the physiological effects of certain electrical waves. I helped prepare friction apparatus for the demonstration and also provided the so-called muscle- nerve preparation of the frog, which includes certain nerves of the hind legs. Dr. Loeb demonstrated that Hertzian waves could be deflected by mirrors. His most dramatic demonstration was with the muscle-nerve preparation. When the machine was working he put hands into the path of the waves, deflecting them toward the muscle-nerve preparation, and said, "Now, Yoomp!"…Yoomp! Yoompl"...And the hind legs "yoomped." He repeated it again. I can still hear him say, "Now, Yoomp!" and see the frog legs jump.(43)
Beyond the experimental physiology demonstration using frogs, Loeb had come to Pacific Grove to obtain the eggs of sea urchins spawning in winter. At the time, Loeb was on a quest to check the experimental results he obtained at Woods Hole Laboratory associated with artificial parthenogenesis - the ability to activate sea urchin eggs without sperm and initiate development.(44) While at Hopkins, Loeb completed experiments that confirmed his results which led to a publication in Science magazine later that year titled “On the Artificial Parthenogenesis of Sea Urchins.”(45)
Jacque Loeb’s experimental results, demonstrating the ability to initiate the embryonic development of sea urchins without sperm, sent shock waves through the biological science community and the American public at large. Being one of the earliest examples of bioengineering, Loeb’s parthenogenesis experiment presented the opportunity to control and manipulate life’s processes, rather than the simple attempt to analyze and understand nature, as had been the practice of the vast majority of biologists in America up to that point in time. Jacque Loeb’s pioneering results, showing a mechanistic conception of life, not only received extended publicity in the press, but would also have significant implications on how scientific research would proceed, not just at Stanford, but the nation itself.
With Loeb finding his visits to the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory in Pacific Grove scientifically rewarding, a rudimentary lab was established for his use along the shores of New Monterey. Positioned just east of the Chinese fishing village, where is today the Hovden Way members entrance to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, sat a plain, one-story wooden building where Loeb would spend significant amount of time from 1903 to 1910, while professor at the University of California.(46) This small lab being a gift to the Department of Physiology of the University of California by Dr. Morris Herzstein, specifically for Loeb to conduct his research.(47)