THE TORTUGAS LABORATORY 397 



THE RESEAECH WORK OF THE TORTUGAS LABORATORY 



By Dr. ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGH MAYER 



-MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION OF THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION AT TOItTTJGAS, FLORIDA 



~VT EARLY seventy miles west of Key West, out in the Gulf of 

 -L-N Mexico and in the most isolated situation occupied by any 

 islands off our coast, lie the seven small keys of the Tortugas. Between 

 them and the Cuban coast flows the great current of the Gulf Stream, 

 and to the eastward of them lie forty miles of open water beyond which 

 are their nearest neighbors, the Marquesas Keys of Florida. The 

 Tortugas are the most westerly and southerly and the newest geolog- 

 ically of all those coral and limestone islets which are strung chain-like 

 one after another in a long graceful sweeping curve from Cape Florida 

 southward and always westward to end in the Tortugas. 



The Tortugas Keys are low, being only as high as the winds and 

 waves can toss the shifting sea-sands which compose them, for they 

 consist entirely of wave-broken fragments of shells with here and there 

 the stony skeleton of a seaweed, echinoderm or dead coral. Every par- 

 ticle composing them was once part of a living creature in the ocean 

 which surrounds them, and thus the islands are but the dead remains 

 of living things that were. A stunted twisted growth of bay cedars 

 and cactus clings to their sandy soil and defies the salt spray which in 

 time of storm drives completely over the islands. Almost every plant 

 surviving upon the Tortugas is tough-leaved and juicy inwardly, or it 

 sends roots far down through the sand to the salt water, for the rain 

 serves but poorly to moisten the loose sandy soil through which it filters 

 rapidly. The Tortugas Keys constitute the rim of an irregular atoll 

 enclosing a lagoon with many a coral patch rising ominously out of 

 deep blue water to within a few feet of the surface. In the old days 

 tradition says that its harbor was the retreat of many a pirate safely 

 anchored in the midst of the maze of its coral reefs. 



Yet the islands, although remote, are not desolate to the naturalist, 

 for all around them lies the deep blue of the tropical ocean, its ripples 

 flashing merrily in the brilliant sun, and looking downward through the 

 crystal depths one floats above the richest coral reefs of the Florida 

 region. No butterflies of an East Indian jungle outrival the brilliant 

 fish which glide languidly in and out among the purple sea-fans bend- 

 ing majestically to the surging sea. Hundreds of creatures find their 

 homes among the caverns of the coral reef, or under the great carpets 

 of rich yellow and olive sea-anemones which overgrow the naked rock 



