I first fell in love with Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories (FHL) in Fall, 1985, a month after defending my Ph.D. thesis at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I had managed to finagle a 1-year FHL postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Richard Strathmann, one of the most creative larval biologists of all time.
My family (daughter, age 9; son, age 6; wife, and I) just rolled into Friday Harbor, and I started coming in every day to do research.
It was unbelievably cool. I became a part of the small family of scientists that work at FHL year round. My job was to do research there, and when summer came around, to organize the weekly seminars. Not a bad job. I was in heaven.
Summer comes to FHL, and there is a steady stream of really interesting, deeply involved scientists. The people I met that year keep popping up in the who’s who of science (is there such a thing?). Many of them have become long-term friends.
But just the place, itself, is magic. The ocean there is just teeming with wildlife. A visit to the tidepools is just enough to blow your mind. Gobs of kelp of myriad different kinds. Huge chitons, big-ass barnacles, limpets of all shapes and flavors. Our friend, David Duggins, was skippering the research vessel, and he would put down a net and bring it up with hundreds of different species. In one trawl. It was like the jewels in the dragons cave. Just grabbing a handful of a net full of marine creatures; creeping and crawling all over the place, was breath-taking.
So here I am about to go to be part of the summer scientist influx (actually I’m part of the “pre-summer” crowd).
I am meeting up with crazy Leonid again. We are returning to our research on slug brains.
Now I’ve just arrived and found my studio apartment. Here’s the view outside my window. Pretty cool, eh? Work starts tomorrow. Tonight I sleep.
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