“On Martha’s Vineyard Island just across the Sound from the Marine Biological Laboratory is the home of the lone survivor of the Heath Hen. The death of this individual will also mean the death of its race, and then another bird will have taken its place among the endless array of extinct forms. The numbers of Heath Hen have been closely followed by ornithologists and since 1908 a detailed census has been taken of the birds each year. For the first time in the history of ornithology a species has been studied and photographed in its normal environment down to the very last individual.”

-Professor Alfred O. Gross, Bowdoin College, as written in The Collecting Net: Volume 5, Number 3, 12 July 1930.

We came across a unique article, “The Last Heath Hen,” in the Biodiversity Heritage Library recently. The article from The Collecting Net newspaper is a beautifully-crafted account from 1930 of the then-last stand and near extinction of the last animal of the ground-feeding Heath Hen species (Tympanuchus cupido cupido), a member of the grouse family and subspecies of the Prairie Chicken. This species once ranged from Maine to the Carolinas in American colonial times and before but was all but extinct on the US mainland by 1870, except for it holding its own in the scrub brush, open fields, and low pine forests of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Historical Spotlight: Martha’s Vineyard

Martha’s Vineyard is an island about twice as long and a bit wider than the island of Manhattan, four miles across the Vineyard Sound body of water from the village of Woods Hole in the town of Falmouth on the Cape Cod peninsula.. The Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe had lived on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard for close to 10,000 years when the island was “discovered” by English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold and named after his deceased daughter Martha in 1602.  Woods Hole (also a land of the Wampanoag Nation), “discovered” by Gosnold in 1602, is a village which in the 19th Century was a whaling port and maritime industrial center, and in the 20th Century became home to six world renowned scientific research institutions, the second oldest of which in 1888 was founded as the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), which published The Collecting Net.

The Collecting Net article, “The Last Heath Hen,” was written by the ornithologist Dr. Alfred Otto Gross, an MBL summer research scientist and Professor of Zoology at Bowdoin College in Maine. This story is a simple account of the prelude to the end of this species, as extinction officially occurred two years later in 1932. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a coalition of conservation organizations made real efforts to save the heath hen—efforts which ultimately failed, as sadly in the end disease, predators, and a forest fire in its breeding ground sealed the fate of this species. Dr. Gross writes that it was decided by conservation organizations, with respect to the last individual of this species, to allow it to live its last years in peace without interference from the government or hunters. Thus, this sensitive account by Dr. Gross, based upon his own research.

According to this undated appreciation of Dr. Gross in the Bowdoin College Daily Sun:

“Although he enjoyed teaching, Gross was a devoted researcher who contributed prolifically to the study of ornithology; he was the author of 265 scientific articles and books and was recognized as a Fellow of the American Ornithologists’ Union in 1930.”

The science history of the oldest private biological laboratory in the United States, the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), is well documented through thousands of publications, as well as in The Collecting Net. The venerable in-house journal of the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Biological Bulletin, has been continuously published, first by MBL and now by the University of Chicago Press, since 1890. The Archives of the MBL holds the papers of scientists, photographs, films, and the administrative records of 133 years of transformative biological science, not to mention over 15,000 rare books going back to the 1500’s, many of which are freely accessible through the BHL. While the science is well documented, getting to know the social history of this year-round (once only during the summer) seaside science mecca is assisted by examining The Collecting Net weekly newspaper, a scrappy summertime tabloid which was published by the social MBL Club from 1926-1953.

The Collecting Net joined the science and the social going on during busy MBL summers, used advertising revenues for a scholarship fund for MBL students, and was edited by a team initially led by Ware Cattell, who later became editor of the journal Science. When the newspaper hit its weekly publishing deadline, it was loaded on a boat and motored across Buzzards Bay to New Bedford where it was typeset, printed, and returned to Woods Hole. While the more recent issues (1950’s) present official-looking administrative accounts of lectures and research, the first years of The Collecting Net offered an exciting and often humorous glimpse into the arts and sciences and lives of the people who spent their summers working at the Marine Biological Laboratory—from ferry and train schedules to Boston, New York, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket; to a comprehensive directory of all the employees and scientists at MBL every summer; to summer choral and drama auditions and performances; and many, many advertisements (see below an assortment of these).

The Collecting Net masthead was “an independent publication devoted to the activities of biologists at the laboratories in Woods Hole.” One thing which The Collecting Net offered relative to the science taking place in Woods Hole during the summers was something which has always been quite important in science literature, and that is the opportunity to rapidly publish findings and new ideas. This, The Collecting Net provided, as in Dr. Ernest E. Just’s “Methods for experimental embryology…,” below, which was published so it could be used by students at MBL the next day! Dr. Alfred O. Gross’ account of the final days of the heath hen was published so the readers of the work could respond to it immediately.

One thing missing though, relative to all the current science of those times, was that The Collecting Net, when published, was not indexed for later discovery. For this reason, almost a century after the first issue was published in 1926, through the Biodiversity Heritage Library it is possible to search the full text content of the articles published within, thereby giving that science new exposure, freely accessible in Woods Hole or anywhere in the world.

The venerable science journal the Biological Bulletin has been published in association with the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole, Massachusetts for over 120 years. Presently, the publisher is the University of Chicago Press, with the editorial office in Woods Hole managed by longtime Editor, Carol Schachinger.

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) was founded in 1888 through the diligent efforts of working scientists and Boston community leaders deeply invested in the marine and associated biological sciences as a tools to conduct research and develop diverse educational opportunities for the study of marine model organisms, through experimental work ultimately leading to an improved understanding of the human condition.

The June 2019 issue of the Biological Bulletin (Volume 236, Number 3) has an informative and beautiful cover illustration of the venous return half of the circulatory system of the horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), chosen to illustrate an article in the issue: Effects of the Biomedical Bleeding Process on the Behavior of the American Horseshoe Crab, Limulus polyphemus, in Its Natural Habitat. The cover of this issue of the Biological Bulletin was designed from a freely downloaded Biodiversity Heritage Library file, coincidentally from a monograph about the horseshoe crab: Recherches sur l’anatomie des Limules — an 1873 work by Alphonse Milne-Edwards, the French medical doctor, mammologist, ornithologist, and carcinologist (one who studies crustaceans) who was director of the French Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle from 1891-1900.

In the MBLWHOI Library this volume, interestingly, is shelved both in the climate controlled secure Rare Books Room and separately in the freely accessible journal stacks as an article in the 5^th Series, Tome 17, (1873) of the journal, Annales des Sciences Naturelles. For important monographic works, multiple shelving locations in the pre-electronic age was common. Much of this content is also available in BHL in the multi-volume work partly edited by Alphonse Milne-Edwards: Mission scientifique au Mexique et dans l’Amérique Centrale : ouvrage publié par ordre de S.M. l’Empereur et par les soins du Ministre de l’instruction publique (1873). The introductory pages of this work speak of the ancient horseshoe crab, living over broadly distributed coastal swaths of the earth, yet the scientific community at that time was stumped as to how this creature was related to other similar species.

We noticed another aspect of the MBLWHOI Library Rare Books Collection copy of this monograph scanned into BHL. The title page is inscribed by the probable original owner of the volume: “Kingsley”. Looking at the History of the Marine Biological Laboratory’s online database of scientists, we see that biology professor John Sterling Kingsley (1854-1929) — who had appointments during his career at the universities of Indiana, Nebraska, Illinois, and Tufts University, and was editor of books such as The Riverside Natural History series (1885) — spent summers from the late 1880’s to the mid 1910’s doing research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.

People often wonder how academic research libraries grow and become institutions unto themselves. This example illustrates one method of library growth. With Kinglsey’s name inscribed on page one of Recherches sur l’anatomie des Limules, the book was most probably given to the then-MBL Library by Kingsley or his heirs — one of thousands of volumes over 130+ years which became a part of the Library’s collection in that manner.

We spoke with Biological Bulletin Managing Editor Carol Schachinger about the process of selecting a cover for a journal issue. She told us that out of the body of articles comprising a new issue published every two months, an appropriate cover image to be considered for publication often naturally rises to the top. In the case of V.236, n.3 of the Biological Bulletin, however, this did not initially happen, and even after contacting article authors for possible cover issue suggestions, Schachinger was still without a cover image as the issue headed towards completion.

Schachinger’s alternate plan was to begin making simple online image searches related to issue articles. As the horseshoe crab has been one of the most important studied marine organisms at the Marine Biological Laboratory, it was natural to look for images of this organism, and shortly, the plates from Milne-Edwards’ monograph appeared in simple Google website searches as distinct possibilities for a cover image.

At first, she did not realize the image she ultimately chose was from the holdings of the MBLWHOI Library, nor did she realize the image was from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Carol was also not aware of the flickr feed of BHL images, which was another access point for this image (and many thousands of images extracted directly from the electronic pages of BHL content). However, when she selected plate 14 of the horseshoe crab circulatory system as the probable cover illustration for the June 2019 issue of the Biological Bulletin, she contacted the librarians at the MBLWHOI Library to ask about proper attribution and the workflow for downloading the out-of-copyright image. They directed her to the FAQ pages of BHL, where all of this information sits.

Thus the v.236, n.3 issue of the Biological Bulletin finally had cover art.

The MBLWHOI Library

In 1888, the sea-side Marine Biological Laboratory heeded the charge of its first Director, Charles Otis Whitman (1842-1910), with reference to the building of a working library to serve its scientists. Woods Hole on Cape Cod was just too far from the Boston research institutions for MBL to rely upon libraries there to provide library services to a small Cape Cod research institution (which would eventually grow into a biological research facility of global renown). Dr. Whitman said: “A library is a necessity in such a laboratory…We must have at a minimum to begin with, all the important journals now printed in the four principal languages.” Jump forward 120 years hence, the MBLWHOI Library (the joint library of the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, founded in 1930) was a founding partner of the Biodiversity Heritage Library, providing key technical and library staff support to BHL at its founding in 2006, and continuing to this day.

One of the most interesting titles which the MBLWHOI Library has scanned into the Biodiversity Heritage Library is Résultats des campagnes scientifiques accomplies sur son yacht par Albert Ier, prince souverain de Monaco = Results of the scientific campaigns carried out on his yacht by Albert I, sovereign prince of Monaco.

This important book series is part of the MBLWHOI Library Special Collection of the great voyages of scientific exploration. Resultats… brings together the science and data collected by the research expeditions led by Prince Albert I of Monaco (1848-1922) at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th Centuries, and the title consists of 110 volumes published from 1889-1950.

The Prince, in addition to having been the head of state of the Principality of Monaco, was an important figure in the development of the ocean sciences in the decades before and after the turn of the 20^th Century. HSH Prince Albert I of Monaco’s pioneering science career included the exploration of the Mediterranean, the south and north Atlantic regions, and polar regions north of Norway known as the Svalbard Archipelago. Prince Albert I of Monaco was also considered a preeminent statesman who understood the importance of the preservation and stewardship of the most fragile areas of our earth, and the importance of science as a source for the foundation of peace on earth: Science: “that force that transforms living conditions, peoples’ mentalities, and international relations.” – Prince Albert I of Monaco (1910)

One hundred and seventy years after his birth, the work of Prince Albert I is today carried on by his great-grandson, the current head of state of Monaco, HSH Prince Albert II.

On July 8^th of this summer, Prince Albert II of Monaco touched down at Barnstable Airport on Cape Cod, Massachusetts to visit the laboratories and marine work environment of the scientists who work at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL, founded in 1888, is an affiliate institution of the University of Chicago.) Activities during the Prince’s visit included laboratory visits, an exploration of the local waters aboard the MBL research vessel Gemma, and a panel discussion held with MBL interim director Neil Shubin and scientists from MBL’s Ecosystems Center: “Adapting to a Climate-Changed World.” The Prince came to MBL also to announce his support, through the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, for the development of a website, SeaBase at MBL, a new open-access infrastructure for integrated data on marine organisms, their genomes, their microbiomes, and the environmental status of their habitats. Later during his visit, HSH Prince Albert II walked down the street to visit the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutions’ (WHOI was founded in 1930) Center for Marine Robotics “Dunkworks” facility.

Woods Hole has hosted heads of state in the past: in 1975 Emperor Hirohito of Japan, whose life long hobby/profession was as a marine biologist (known for his detailed descriptions of marine species), visited scientists at both the MBL and WHOI as well as making a visit to the collections of the MBLWHOI Library.

The MBLWHOI librarians Jen Walton (Co-director/MBL Archivist), Matt Person (Tech Services Coordinator), and Dave Sherman (WHOI Archivist) all played roles among tens of MBL and WHOI staff members who contributed to the planning of Prince Albert II’s historic visit to Woods Hole.

The Librarians prepared a small exhibition for a visit from the Prince on July 9^th centered upon the work of Prince Albert I. Librarians Jen Walton and Matt Person researched the past and present connections between Monaco and the MBL, and they also studied specific volumes from Résultats des campagnes scientifiques accomplies sur son yacht par Albert Ier, prince souverain de Monaco (donated to the MBL by Prince Albert I) relative to current MBL environmental and biological research. While the physical volumes were used in the exhibition, the librarians consulted the digital volumes in the BHL for multiple reference purposes.

In addition to volumes from Résultats…, the exhibit included a special chair, now a part of the WHOI Archives collection, prepared for the exhibit by current WHOI Archivist Dave Sherman. In 1933, while on a marine biological station tour of Europe, WHOI marine chemist Professor Norman Rakestraw visited the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco and was given a gift of a wooden chair, which had been part of the late 19^th Century oceanographic research yacht Hirondelle, owned and operated by Prince Albert I of Monaco. The Hirondelle chair was donated by Rakestraw to WHOI upon his return to the United States.

Jen Walton concentrated her research on one of the Cephalopod volumes, Volume 17 (1900), and in particular this image of a large squid which was named in honor of the family of the Princes Albert I and Albert II: Grimalditeuthis richardi.

Matt Person told highlights of the story of the four expeditions (through studying Volumes 40-44 of Resultats…) to the Svalbard Archipelago which Prince Albert I led in 1898, 1899, 1906, and 1907. Matt Person also showed Prince Albert II an 1899 bathymetric chart of the Azores Islands and explained how the use of data from multiple sources collected by Prince Albert I over time created a single complete work…and this was compared to current arctic research at the Ecosystems Center of the MBL, which has drawn data over many years from multiple polar region collection sites, to inform global studies of climate change.

While both Jen Walton and Matt Person used the physical book volumes in the research they performed to become conversant in the work of Prince Albert I , they also employed the full text search and OCR (optical character recognition) files from the Biodiversity Heritage Library and BHL Affiliate the Internet Archive, for which they used an online translation tool to convert French text into English. This translation process was essential to gain a clearer understanding of the text, which informed the illustrations and photographs and narratives of the exhibition as explained to Prince Albert II.

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The MBLWHOI Library is a Biodiversity Heritage Library founding member, currently an Affiliate, and our staff was part of the development team of the original taxonomic name server, which extracted scientific names from scanned literature. Our staff also formed part of the original “BHL worker bees”, who developed the implementation of much of the day-to-day workflows related to the operation of the online digital library. Matt Person is the Tech Services Coordinator of the MBL WHOI Library and a member of the BHL Collections Committee.

This post is the sixth in our series celebrating World Oceans Day on June 8. This series explores publications that represent important milestones in the progress of marine bioscience research and ocean exploration.

Squid have been a major marine organism model in Woods Hole for almost 150 years. Report on the conditions of the sea fisheries of the south coast of New England. 1873. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36088064.

When whaling and fertilizer manufacturing ended in the latter half of the 19^th century in the quaint village of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the town turned to research, growing quickly into a world renowned center for marine science. In 1871, the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries (the antecedent of the National Marine Fisheries Service), founded by the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Spencer Fullerton Baird, published Report on the conditions of the sea fisheries of the south coast of New England. This report notes the recently passed “Joint resolution for the protection and preservation of the food-fishes of the coast of the United States”, which recognized that the nation’s fishing resources were not endless. Commissioner Baird realized the need to develop fisheries management plans to balance once abundant fisheries populations with the competing needs of the human population. The volume also created a baseline inventory of marine species and fishing techniques in and around Cape Cod and the east coast of the United States.

Commercial fishing net used in the 1870s. Report on the conditions of the sea fisheries of the south coast of New England. 1873. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36087402.

By the late 1880’s, what is now the oldest continuously operating private marine laboratory in the United States, the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), had been founded, with its scientists publishing the journal Biological Bulletin. The Biological Bulletin v.67 (1934) contains an article written by biologists August Krogh and Ancel Keys entitled Methods for the determination of dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen in sea water.  The development of accurate ways to measure nitrogen concentrations in non-fresh water was critical to understanding eutrophication, a condition where excess nutrients result in algal blooms and fish kills.  Eutrophication is at the forefront of many studies related to the health of our oceans, including the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and many coastal waters.

August Krogh’s and Ancel Keys’ apparatus for the determination of dissolved organic nitrogen in sea water. The Biological Bulletin. v. 67 (1934). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1441636.

With the National Marine Fisheries Service studying marine fisheries in Woods Hole and the Marine Biological Laboratory focusing on marine biology and cell science, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was founded in 1930 to study the still developing field of the oceanographic sciences. In 1952, WHOI began publishing a magazine/journal called Oceanus. One of the first articles published in volume 1 of Oceanus highlights the discovery of new fishing grounds off of the northeast U.S. coast, and the abundance of never before seen species.

Volume 1, number 1 of Oceanus, a photo of the WHOI research vessel Atlantis. Oceanus. v. 1, n. 1 (1952). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1555338.

Fifty one volumes later, Oceanus continues to publish issues in both print and online formats, and issues archived online from 1952-2007 can also be viewed through the Biodiversity Heritage Library. As the course of the history of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has revolved around ocean exploration and studying the health of the oceans, so also has the subject matter of Oceanus, which has diligently reported on the fascinating work performed by Woods Hole scientists.

For example, in volume 44 issue 1 (2005) of Oceanus, an announcement was made of the establishment of the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health, a collaboration between WHOI, MBL, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over the last decade Oceanus has reported on this important collaboration many times, and in the above mentioned article WHOI physical oceanographer and Senior Scientist Dennis McGillicuddy said: “The ocean is a turbulent fluid medium that’s changing all the time…In order to make significant progress in health concerns, we have to grapple with how physics, biology, and chemistry intersect and interact. It’s really a fundamentally new direction for this research.” The author of this article, Andrea Baird, wrote: “Human health and welfare are intimately tied to the oceans. Fisheries yield 130 million tons of food each year, while biologists and chemists continue to uncover useful medicinal compounds among the snails, sponges, and other marine creatures. At the same time, exploding populations of toxic algae cause respiratory problems and shellfish poisoning, as sewage and runoff fill coastal waters with contaminants that poison fish and infect swimmers.”

Phytoplankton like these produce harmful algal blooms. Sengco, Mario. Oceanus. v. 43, no. 1 (2004). http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/a-fatal-attraction-for-harmful-algae. Photo by Don Anderson, courtesy of WHOI.

Since the 1970’s scientists at sea have reported seeing massive amounts of bits and pieces of plastics in the North Atlantic Ocean in the Sargasso Sea, an area bordered by the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current, the Canary Current, and the North Equatorial Current. Oceanus in 2010 and 2013 published articles detailing a collaborative project concerning these human produced plastics, which was funded by the Woods Hole Center for Oceans Health, and conducted by three Woods Hole research institutions: the MBL, the Sea Education Association (SEA), and WHOI. SEA, which runs an undergraduate semester at sea program, has been collecting samples of plastics floating on the Sargasso Sea since 1986.

In the 2010 Oceanus article, Plastic Particles Permeate the Atlantic: Scientists find new clues about what happens to plastics in the ocean , v. 48, no. 2 (2010), author Dave Lawrence speaks of the history of scientists learning of the existence of these plastics. Lawrence says: “The plastic particles showed evidence of being coated with living organisms. Are microbes or other tiny life forms digesting the plastics, causing them to sink, or are they sticking to the particles and being carried through the ocean like sailors on rafts?”

Most of the Sargasso Sea plastics collected by Woods Hole scientists are tiny shards. Lawrence, Dave. Oceanus. v. 48, no. 2 (2010). http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/plastic-particles-permeate-the-atlantic. Photo by Tom Kleindinst, courtesy of WHOI.

In the 2013 Oceanus article, Behold the ‘Plastisphere’: Colonies of microbes flourish on tiny bits in the ocean v. 50, no. 2 (2013), Oceanus Editor Lonny Lippsett details results produced by an analysis of the plastics. While humans are responsible for the placement of plastics in the ocean, different microbes live on the plastics, some consuming the plastics, while others are toxic disease causing bacteria. Lippsett wrote: “Using scanning electron microscopy and gene sequencing techniques, they found at least 1,000 different types of bacterial cells on the plastic samples, including many species yet to be identified. The colonies included plants, algae, and bacteria that manufacture their own food (autotrophs), animals and bacteria that feed on them (heterotrophs), predators that feed on these, and other organisms that establish symbiotic relationships. These complex communities exist on plastic bits hardly bigger than the head of a pin, and they have arisen with the explosion of plastics in the oceans in the past 60 years.” Lippsett also quotes MBL scientist Linda Amaral-Zettler: “We’re not just interested in who’s there. We’re interested in their function, how they’re functioning in this ecosystem, how they’re altering this ecosystem, and what’s the ultimate fate of these particles in the ocean,” Amaral-Zettler said. “Are they sinking to the bottom of the ocean? Are they being ingested by other organisms? If they’re being ingested, what impact does that have?”

Whether establishing concerns about the health of fisheries stocks and human consumption in the late 1800’s, detailing a new methodology for the study of nitrogen levels in the ocean in the 1930’s, or studying the impact of plastics on the health of the ocean, all of this research is united through time as trying to make the world, the oceans, and humanity a healthier place.

The MBLWHOI Library began collecting science literature when the Marine Biological Laboratory came into existence in 1888, and it has been the main library serving the Woods Hole scientific community, including all of the institutions mentioned in this post.  The MBLWHOI Library is a founding member the Biodiversity Heritage Library, scanning over 12,000 volumes, including the publications mentioned herein, since 2007.

More World Oceans Day Resources

• Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and this blog all this week as we explore marine biodiversity and awesome related publications in BHL.
• Check out some monumental publications in historic and present-day marine bioscience research in our BHL collection.
• Browse a selection of marine biodiversity illustrations in Flickr and Pinterst