Curiosity and compulsion
Henry Bryant Bigelow loved boats and fish and saltwater. His upbringing, however, might have suggested fishing as a mere hobby. “In broadest outlines–the prep school background, the Harvard lineage, the European tours, the summer house on the shore–his life seemed that of a slightly decadent Boston dilettante,” writes David Dobbs in his book, The Great Gulf. “His energy and curiosity, though, allowed no decay, and he never cared to dabble. He did” (p 16). Bigelow became an oceanographer.
In the early to mid 20th century, Bigelow lead research voyages to study fisheries in the Gulf of Maine. Dobbs writes:
This was not a man who was going to do his best work indoors. It’s probably impossible to overestimate what Bigelow’s physical restlessness, his compulsion to engage the world with his body as well as his mind, brought to his work–or, for that matter, how lucky he was to find work that let him exercise that compulsion. He loved oceanography’s physical and logistical challenges–the sailing and navigation, the duct-tape engineering, the invention or modification of gear, the weather, the work on deck. These enthusiasms made him a better oceanographer, for they encouraged him to go out repeatedly to collect data. His perpetual engagement in such practical concerns also added rigor to his theoretical side. Like the discipline itself, the fieldwork of oceanography required imposing on the natural world an intellectual rigor that was truly cognizant of the sea’s dynamic nature. A navigational decision that sets you on a certain course, the repair of a piece of dredging equipment that must sink fathoms deep and scoop up sea bottom, the design of a drift bottle that will move easily with the current yet survive all weather and seas–these things were, in essence, theories that would be tested mercilessly. If you send a weak idea in the the sea, it will almost certainly come back mangled. To constantly check one’s ideas against such demands, and to experience the ocean so often and under so many conditions that it provides the texture and patterns of one’s conciousness, can’t help but encourage a reality-based style of theoretical inquiry (p 18).
Bigelow served as the founding director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He died in 1967. His book, Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, has undergone three revisions and remains in print.
Sources
David Dobbs, The Great Gulf: Fishermen, Scientists, and the Struggle to Revive the World’s Greatest Fishery Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000)
January 1, 2022 *The Great Gulf* curiosity fieldwork Henry Bryant Bigelow vocation