Blast from the Past: Gunter

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

At turns, science is exhilarating, mind numbing, joyous and challenging. And every once in a while, it’s dinner. At least it was for Dr. Gordon Gunter in June 1955, when a mutant specimen of eyeless redfish found its way from a Gulf Coast fisherman into the fish biologist’s hands.

Gunter tells the story best, in this excerpt taken from a letter describing the bizarre specimen to the scientific community in The American Naturalist in 1956:

“It [the eyeless redfish] was in good condition and there was a considerable amount of fat on it. After the preliminary examinations and the photographs were made, the body was eaten because it appeared to be perfectly normal. The head was preserved and is in my possession.”

It turns out science can satisfy a hunger for knowledge, and sometimes, well, it just satisfies a hunger.

And thankfully Gunter was right: his creepy fish dinner was normal and didn’t cut short what would become his long distinguished career in marine science.

Gunter, an avid naturalist and fish biologist, received his masters in 1931 and his PhD in 1945 under the tutelage of Dr. Elmer Lund, zoologist and founder of the Marine Science Institute.

Lund was first drawn to Port Aransas in 1935 to investigate a massive fish kill (later determined to be caused by a red tide). He constructed a small, rough-lumber shack on the old Corps of Engineers dock, and shortly thereafter, the Marine Science Institute was born. It was in the old pier building that Lund and Gunter first studied the distribution, life history and relative abundance of marine fishes of Texas.

When Lund’s tenure as director came to a close, Gunter took up the charge. He served from 1950-1955 and later became director of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

Dr. Gordon Gunter, director of MSI from 1950-1955

The Marine Science Institute, circa 1950.

Dr. Elmer Lund, first director of MSI from 1941-1949