[1][2] Hedgpeth met and corresponded with Edward F. Ricketts (1897–1948), a charismatic researcher of West Coast marine biology and the real-life model for the character "Doc" in John Steinbeck's novel, Cannery Row.
His publications included the massive Volume 1 of the "Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology" (1957); and Introduction to Seashore Life of the San Francisco Bay Region (1962).
[1] The nudibranch Polycera hedgpethi[1] was named in his honor by Ernst Marcus, a marine biologist who taught at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
Under the same pseudonym, he published "Poems in Contempt of Progress" and vocally opposed a nuclear power plant once proposed at Bodega Head, California (Carlton 2006).
His influence was instrumental in getting the California freshwater shrimp, Syncaris pacifica, listed as an endangered species (Schram and Newman 2007).