Between Pacific Tides


Between Pacific Tides is a 1939 book by Ed Ricketts and Jack Calvin that explores the intertidal ecology of the Pacific coast of the United States. The book was originally titled "Between Pacific Tides: An Account of the Habits and Habitats of Some Five Hundred of the Common, Conspicuous Seashore Invertebrates of the Pacific Coast Between Sitka, Alaska, and Northern Mexico".
Prior to Ricketts' work, the standard descriptive text of intertidal species of the Pacific was Myrtle E. Johnson's Seashore Animals of the Pacific Coast, published in 1927.
Between Pacific Tides was out of print from 1942 to 1948, but it has since been revised and updated to keep it current, and is now in its fifth edition with the size increasing around twenty percent from the original. Updated and expanded sections have been added since the original edition was published, including: John Steinbeck's Foreword to the 1948 edition; a new chapter regarding the influence on the distribution of shore organisms; an updated Annotated Systematic Index and General Bibliography comprising 2,300 entries; and the addition of 200 photographs and drawings.
By 2004, the book had sold around 100,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling books published by Stanford University Press.