He felt better once he was breathing open air. The sun was warm, and walking gave him purpose, even if he was going nowhere in particular. He headed, by both habit and the position of the lab, toward the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was a trip he made often, and his feet carried him there the way a horse’s always returned him to his own feed trough.

The tourists annoyed him, even though he recognized their importance to the local economy, and particularly to the continued financial health of the aquarium. Still, their aimless waddling and tendency to walk four abreast, their baby strollers and the maps clutched in their hands as they looked for local landmarks, made him despise them. If one, sensing that he lived there, asked him for directions, he always politely answered, all the while wishing they would just go home and leave him in peace.

Ahead of him, a clutch of Japanese tourists stood in a confused knot, half pointing in one direction and half in the other. One of them caught his eye, and he quickly crossed the street, leaving her to get directions from someone else.

He passed the aquarium, knowing that going in at this, the busiest time, would make him wish for the destruction of all mankind. Instead, he walked swiftly down Cannery Row until the crowds thinned and the air felt less suffused with the intolerable stupidity of people on summer vacation.

He walked until he came to San Carlos Beach, where he paused to watch the divers entering and leaving the water. He had more tolerance for them because he was one of them. Even so, he found himself wishing there were fewer of them, or at least fewer of the ones for whom the ocean was nothing more than a playground.

On the beach, a dive instructor was leading a group of six wet-suited bodies into the surf, demonstrating the proper way to enter the ocean in the presence of moderate surf. The students followed, stiff-armed and awkward, their backs to the ocean and their fins slapping the wet sand. How many of those fins, he wondered, would soon be kicking up the sea floor, disturbing the homes of untold numbers of small animals?

He wondered, too, how many of the divers who used the beach knew of its other name, the Edward F. Ricketts Marine Reserve, or, if they did, knew who Ricketts was. Then again, how many of them knew that San Carlos Beach got its name from the San Carlos Canning Company, one of the area’s largest and most profitable operations at the height of the sardine-packing industry? Mysteriously burned to the ground (as were many of the canneries when the boom ended due to overfishing) in 1956, all that remained of the San Carlos Canning Company were the beach that bore its name and several intake pipes that still stretched out into the sea.

The establishment of the Ricketts Marine Reserve was the work of several dedicated local divers who wanted to save the area both from overfishing and the planned erection of a gold museum. Surprisingly, it had been a difficult battle, with even the aquarium and Ben’s own Hopkins Marine Station fearing that imposing restrictions on usage would limit their access to the area. Ultimately, though, the measure passed.