The complexity of the life-pattern on Pulmo Reef was even greater than at Cape San Lucas. Clinging to the coral, growing on it, burrowing into it, was a teeming fauna. Every piece of the soft material broken off skittered and pulsed with life—little crabs and worms and snails. One small piece of coral might conceal thirty or forty species, and the colors on the reef were electric. >> —John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez In the spring of 1940, a 75-foot sardine seiner called the Western Flyer rounded Cabo San Lucas and worked north along Baja’s eastern shore to a reef known as El Pulmo. Aboard were John Steinbeck, his wife Carol, a four-man Monterey crew to run the boat, and Steinbeck’s closest friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. The six-week trip was a collecting expedition. By its end, they had cataloged more than 500 species,…