Special Issue—Scripps Centennial

dinoflagellates, which he sampled with a bottle of his design, closed by a messenger sent down the wire. The bottle was suspended from the end of the wire, so only a single sample could be obtained on each cast. The next sample bottle associated with Scripps was developed by Winfred E. Allen, a student of Kofoid’s and an assistant professor at Scripps from 1919–1943 (Figure 2). Allen gathered a remarkable 20 year-long data set of weekly phytoplankton samples from the Scripps pier, using a closing bottle he designed. Like the Kofoid bottle, the Allen bottle was suspended from the end of a wire, and closed at depth with a messenger (see Figure 3). Samples were poured out of the bottle through a spigot, and filtered through silk bolting cloth (the standard plankton filter of the time) into a small jar for preservation. Allen (1929) wrote, “A series of subsurface catches at fifteen depths from surface to one hundred meters has been obtained with it in thirty-two minutes.” Even by modern standards, this is impressive. Probably the most famous bottle designed at Scripps is the Van Dorn bottle, patented by William G. Van Dorn in 1956. Van Dorn, a physical oceanographer, was a student at Scripps until 1953 when he obtained his Ph.D. degree. His bottle could be attached at any point along a vertical wire, and was tripped closed by a messenger. The bottle—a long tube—was sealed by two rubber “plungers” joined by a length of rubber tubing running inside the bottle. Bottles of this design are still available today. Lest I give the impression that Scripps was a hotbed of sample-bottle development, it seems that between the late 1800s and mid-1900s any oceanographer worth his salt had developed a bottle bearing his name. In a haphazard search of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration image archives, I came across more than 100 bottles developed during this time, mainly in Europe and Scandinavia. As useful as bottle samples were, and are, they have problems, particularly when trying to understand distributions and activities of phytoplankton. In 1943 H. W. Graham of Scripps published a paper in which he noted, “The time-honored method of counting the number of plant cells is not satisfactory. First, it is a slow and tedious procedure. Second, the results must be expressed in numbers of cells when the size of the cells in different species or organisms is very Over the past 100 years Scripps Institution of Oceanography has been a center for plankton research. Its reputation has waxed and waned depending largely on the scientists present, and their ability to incorporate new technologies, collect and interpret new data, and synthesize and disseminate their results. The study of marine phytoplankton has always been limited by the technologies available to gather and analyze samples. It is not surprising then that the development of technology and evolution of ideas at Scripps has mirrored, and often driven, the changes in the oceanographic community as a whole. Here I trace some developments in phytoplankton research at Scripps, concentrating first on the tools, then on the concepts. My review is by no means exhaustive, for I have said embarrassingly little or nothing about the work and lives of many extraordinary scientists. Still, I hope that this review will give a flavor of the changes in the field, from the time of a “sheltered local marine station” to the present.