A Tale of Many Marine Stations: 150 Years of Marine Ecology in the Eastern English Channel

Long before marine laboratories were commonplace, a few visionary scientists created the first of a growing number of biological field stations in the second half of the 19^th century. This article tells the 150-year tale of the rise and fall of six marine stations that belonged to three different universities and were sometimes operated simultaneously along a stretch of merely ten kilometers of the French coastline of the eastern English Channel. Specifically, I focus on the intellectual lineages, sense of brotherhood, rivalries, and even the indifference between individuals and institutions that shaped the local scientific landscape and paved the way for what became modern marine biology and ecology, and oceanography.