Back in San Francisco, Beck met with Leverett Mills Loomis, Director of the California Academy of Sciences. Loomis was interested in seabirds, especially the Tubinares, now the Procellariiformes, and hired Beck to collect in Monterey Bay, the Channel Islands of California, and the Revillagigedo Islands of Mexico, while he waited for his Colombia permits. In 1905–1906, Beck was hired by the California Academy of Sciences to organize and lead a large seagoing expedition to Cocos Island and the Galápagos Islands aboard the Schooner “Academy.” Loomis organized scientific specialists in botany, herpetology, entomology, and malacology, geology, paleontology, as well as ornithology. Besides Beck, the expedition's scientists were: Alban Stewart, botanist; W. H. Ochsner, geologist/paleontologist/malacologist; F. X. Williams, entomologist/malacologist; E. W. Gifford and J. S. Hunter, ornithologists; J. R. Slevin and E. S. King, herpetologists. Together they assembled the largest scientific collection of specimens from the archipelago ever, leading to our great understanding of the biota of the islands.