Charles M. Breder, Jr., Chair
Tribute to Dr. Charles M. Breder, Jr.
By
Dr. Eugenie Clark
Founder and Director (1955-1965) of Cape Haze Marine
Laboratory, later renamed Mote Marine Laboratory
Dr. Charles M. Breder was my friend, teacher and mentor. He was the greatest influence in my life as a graduate student, my career as a marine biologist and my decision to accept the challenge to start a small marine laboratory in Placida, Florida, in January 1955. In the early development of the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory, now the Mote Marine Laboratory, I constantly sought his advice. He visited the Lab often, helping me over the rough spots in its administration and scientific development, constantly encouraging and helping me.
On his first visit to see me in Placida, Florida (1955) to see how I was coming along as 'Executive Director' of the tiny new Cape Haze Marine Lab, I asked him about this strange little grouper colony I found where all the individuals were females, their bellies swollen with ovulated eggs an no males were around to fertilize them. I showed him a female I had just dissected, with a big bilobed ovary full of eggs, some oozing out of the oviduct. The ovary had a white wavy band around it, which on my drawing I labeled 'fat?'
"You make such good drawings", Breder commented. "Why don’t you look at a pinch of ’fat?’ under a microscope in a drop of sea water?" It was swarming with spermatozoa. I discovered where the ‘males’ were and began a study of the amazing mating behavior of a functional hermaphrodite. Dr. Breder continued to be my teacher in his gentle way that pointed out my errors, as always, in a most complementary way that made me feel good while still learning. His great insight into the ways of fishes and his calm but informal way of teaching and encouraging me always touched me. I worshiped him, as did many of his students.
To my delight, Dr. Breder and his wife, Ethel, bought a charming house on the bay on Manasota key in Englewood, Florida, across the road from where my husband and I were living on the beach and raising our small children. When he retired in 1965 from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he moved permanently to Englewood where he continued his research on fish behavior full-time in our lab or at the small laboratory he built next to his house. Dr. Breder was a constant inspiration and help in the development of the lab. He was a Mecca for his students and colleagues from New York, many of whom came to research at our lab, to hear and discuss fish problems with Dr. Breder. I never made a decision concerning the lab without consulting him. He was also a friend and inspiration to my children and believed every child’s interest in living creatures should be encouraged and treated with respect.
Once Dr. Breder approach a young visitor at our lab who was looking at a fish in a jar. "What do you think that fish is, young feller?" Dr. Breder asked him. The boy told him authoritatively, "well, according to Breder its–," and he took out his copy of the famous Field Book of Marine Fishes of the Atlantic Coast, a best-seller that Breder whipped out for "Boy Scouts" during his long train commutes from his home in New Jersey to his office in New York where he conducted and published his scholarly and ichthyological research papers. His field book was widely used by children and ichthyologists. He could talk about complex ichthyological phenomena in such sample terms a child could grasp the meaning. My children adored Dr. Breder. The twinkle in his eye and his unique sense of humor got to each of them. They took it for granted that he was a genius. My oldest child, Hera, is still inspired by her early associations at the lab. "How many seven-year olds got to work as an assistant to Dr. Breder?" She recently asked. With her keen eyes she collected tiny ‘blackfish’ from floating Sargassum weed that came to shore near our house at Point of Rocks on Siesta Key where we had moved to be near the new location of the lab and my husband’s work at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Dr. Breder published his innovative studies on the paradoxical camouflage of fish that could turn black over white sand and could change their behavior to look like a piece of floating flotsam. He acknowledged Hera’s help in this scientific publication. Today Hera is a graduate student at Texas A&M University studying fishes for to her Ph.D. The lab was not only a place to do scientific research but was often visited by budding biologists, a place were visiting scientists could bring their children while they worked at the lab, and where we could have programs that included children, which I am happy continues to this day.
During his lifetime Dr. Breder’s the accomplishments have never been equaled by any other experimental or behavioral ichthyologists. In 160 papers and books, covering thousands of pages, he recorded an unparalleled array of field and laboratory investigations, systematic and distributional studies. He was born Charles Marcus Breder, Jr. in Jersey City, New Jersey, on 25 June 1897 and was raised in nearby Newark. His earliest publication, written at 18, concerned photography of local birds with the aid of a long distance electromagnetic shutter-tripper he developed from a seven-dollar plate camera he owned. By age 21, he had published 15 popular articles and notes and had started his remarkable theoretical and experimental studies on fish locomotion. His first job at 22 was with the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in Washington, D.C. where he was hired as a scientific assistant. With only a high school education, he claimed all that he learned about biology and ichthyology was from the Newark public library. He joined the New York Aquarium in 1921 holding many positions which led to his appointment as its curator in 1937. He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Newark, which was later incorporated into Rutgers University.
Dr. Breder became a visiting professor to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the New York University in 1941 and continued to teach until 1950. He taught a graduate course in ichthyology, which is where I first met him in 1943. He saw nothing wrong about a young woman wanting to spend her life studying fishes, I dedicated my second book, The Lady and the Sharks, to him. In the prefaces to the second and third editions of this book and in several chapters (published by Mote Marine laboratory) I expressed in detail what it meant to me and my children to know this brilliant ichthyologist, whose life was devoted to studying the behavior, morphology and ecology of fishes. In 1944, he became curator and chairman of the department of ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He had two desks in his big office next to his lab. He laughingly told us he wore two hats and tried to change them once a day to switch his thinking from administration to ichthyology.
Dr. Breder also served as the administrative director for the Lerner Marine Laboratory on North Bimini island in the Bahamas from 1947 to 1957 where Perry Gilbert did his first experimental field studies on shark behavior. Many other biologists concluding Dr. Bill and Margaret Tavolga, Dr. Phyllis Cahn and I did many studies on fish behavior at this Lerner lab. After 1957, most of his work was done on the West Coast of Florida. He served as an adviser to the Board of the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory and later as a senior research associate at the Mote Marine Laboratory.
Dr. Breder married Ruth B. Demarest November 18, 1918, by whom he had two sons, Charles Marcus Breder III and Richard Frederick Breder. On April 17, 1933, he married Ethel Lear Snyder, and when Ethel died of cancer, we were concerned about his lonely life. But a few years later at a meeting of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in Miami he renewed his friendship with his ex-student, lab assistant and colleague at the American Museum of Natural History, Priscilla Rasquin and they were married January 3, 1967. Priscilla painted the herons, raccoons and habitat around their bay house in their idyllic setting among mangroves and palmetto trees. Every time I visited him, we walked down on to his pier and looked out over the side at schooling mullets or some other fish phenomena that occupied Dr. Breder’s thoughts. Dr. Breder avoided publicity all his life and never wanted to cooperate with newspaper articles and radio or TV interviews. In his mellow 80's however, I coaxed him to participate in a Japanese TV program which I told him could be to my advantage. It was filmed mainly on his pier unobtrusively as the camera man zoomed in on his face. The Japanese told me that his blue eyes stole the show has seen naturally talked about fishes with profound insight and a wonderful sense of humor.
Priscilla took care of Dr. Breder for the rest of his life and became a firm supporter of Mote Marine Laboratory. In 1991 she probably joined him and his followers in some spot in heaven where fish talk and theories about animal behavior could be discussed endlessly with this Socrates of fish philosophy. And where I hope some day to join them.
A biography of Charles M. Breder, Jr. by Dr. James W. Atz, appears in Copeia, No. 3, pp 853-856, 1986.