1 ARRmNG IN WOODS HOLE 



£k 



17 



dock. If arriving by car, one often waits for the upraised drawbridge (which 

 replaced the old arched bridge around 1910) to go back down and thereby 

 complete the main street over the Eel Pond. The new arrival then moves 

 cautiously down the street toward what must be the MBL. Of course, 

 sometimes it is not the MBL because the newcomer first passes the buildings 

 of that other major Woods Hole research center, WHO! (the Woods Hole 

 Oceanographic Institution). Finally, the researcher finds MBL Street and 

 feels secure in the knowledge that this, at last, is the right way. But then, if 

 driving, where does one park? For, since the automobile first arrived in 

 Woods Hole, success has filled the parking lots with cars offering an ever 

 more impressive range of license plates. Somehow, with careful planning, 

 remote parking lots and shuttle buses, and "ethical parking" (don't take 

 even a foot more than you need), they all fit in. 



After a student or researcher arrives today, finds a place to stay, and 

 has had time to walk about and explore the landscape a bit, the question 

 asked back home may resurface. Why do biology by the seashore? Why 

 come to a marine laboratory anyway? Why Woods Hole and why the MBL? 

 Some have expressed scepticism about the excuses for going to the sea. The 

 British zoologist E. Ray Lankester, for example, found that "spasmodic 

 descent upon the seashore" particularly suspect and too like a mere 

 summer vacation. Today a few admit that they do not really need to be in 

 Woods Hole to do their work. Some marine organisms can be flown around 

 the country, as witnessed by the number of live lobsters leaving Boston's 

 Logan Airport. But why not work at the seashore? The relative simplicity and 

 diversity of marine organisms makes them particularly useful for under- 

 standing life processes. Most researchers really do need to be beside the 



Windswept and bare, 

 Penzance as it looked in 

 1909. Gideon S. Dodds 

 Collection, MBL Archives. 



