Then and Now: Collecting Marine Organisms

Collecting organisms for research has been essential to the Marine Biological Laboratory’s (MBL) mission since 1888, the year of its founding. At first, the MBL borrowed boats and collecting nets from the U.S. Fish Commission in Woods Hole, since it didn’t own any waterfront property yet, much less a boat!

The MBL made do with small dories for marine collecting until 1890, when the 35-foot Sagitta was purchased, allowing for longer expeditions. At that point, Captain John J. Veeder was hired to take charge of the collecting trips, serving admirably until he retired in 1933.

Veeder "directed all collecting trips by student groups, organized class picnics, demonstrated time and time again that he knew how to put on a real clambake, and as the record books always say, never lost anybody,” writes historian and MBL Fellow Jane Maienschein (1).

While MBL researchers and students generally did their own collecting in the lab’s early years, Veeder helped to provide transportation or to gather species that proved more difficult to find or were further away, Maienschein writes. Eventually, MBL researchers and courses turned to the collecting crews to gather their specimens, an arrangement that continues today.