A Century of Copepods: The U.S. Fisheries Steamer Albatross

The marine invertebrates of North America received little attention before the arrival of Louis Agassiz in 1846. Agassiz and his students, particularly Addison E. Verrill and Richard Rathbun, and Agassiz's colleague Spencer F. Baird, provided the concept and stimulus for expanded investigations. Baird's U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries (1871) provided a principal means, especially through the U.S. Fisheries Steamer Albatross (1882). Rathbun participated in the first and third Albatrossscientific cruises in 1883-84 and published the fist accounts of Albatross parasitic copepods. The first report of Albatross planktonic copepods was published in 1895 by Wilhelm Giesbrecht of the Naples Zoological Station. Other collections were sent to the Norwegian Georg Ossian Sars. The American Charles Branch Wilson eventually added planktonic copepods to his extensive published works on the parasitic copepods from the Albatross. The Albatross copepods from San Francisco Bay were reported upon by Calvin Olin Esterly in 1924. Henry Bryant Bigelow accompanied the last scientific cruise of the Albatross in 1920. Bigelow incorporated the 1920 copepods into his definitive study of the plankton of the Gulf of Maine. The late Otohiko Tanaka, in 1969, published two reviews of Albatross copepods. Albatross copepods will long be worked and reworked. This great ship and her shipmates were mutually inspiring, and they inspire us still.