Joel Hedgpeth

Joel Walker Hedgpeth (September 29, 1911 – July 28, 2006) was a marine biologist, environmentalist and author. He was an expert on the marine arthropods known as sea spiders (Pycnogonida), and on the seashore plant and animal life of southern California. He was a spokesperson for care for the floral and faunal diversity of the California coastline.

Hedgpeth was born on September 29, 1911 in Oakland, California. He married Florence Warrens in 1944, and the couple would have two children. He obtained his PhD (on the distribution and ecology of invertebrates along the Texas and Louisiana coasts) from the University of California, Berkeley in 1952. While at Berkeley, he studied under two of the most important marine biologists of the era, S.F. Light and Ralph I. Smith.

Hedgpeth met and corresponded with Edward F. Ricketts (1897–1948), a charismatic researcher of West Coast marine biology and the real-life model for the character "Doc" in John Steinbeck's novel, Cannery Row. Hedgpeth himself may have been the model for the character, "Old Jay" in Steinbeck's novel, Sweet Thursday [Schram and Newman 2007]. Hedgpeth later was the editor of several editions of Ricketts' "Between Pacific Tides," a classic in marine biology, describing marine life along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington. Hedgpeth edited more of Ricketts' writings in two volumes of "The Outer Shores."

His publications included the massive Volume 1 of the "Treatise on Maine Ecology & Paleoecology" (1957); and Introduction to Seashore Life of the San Francisco Bay Region (1962). His teaching posts included the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego. He was also director of the Pacific Marine Station, a University of the Pacific research facility at Dillon Beach, California, from 1957 to 1965. He was director of the Yaquina Biological Laboratories of the Marine Science Center, Oregon State University, Newport, Oregon, from 1965 to 1973. He retired as Professor of Oceanography in September, 1973. He and his wife moved to Santa Rosa, California during retirement. He died July 28, 2006 in Hillsboro, Oregon. His archives are housed at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

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