PRESS RELEASE

 

 


For immediate release

 

                                                Contact:

                                                                                    Museum Director Paul Finnegan

                                                                                    (831) 648-5716, ext. 12

                                                                                    pfinnegan@ci.pg.ca.us

 

“Sea of Cortez” tidepools featured in Pacific Grove talk   

 

Exequiel Ezcurra, who developed the first systematic environmental impact studies in Mexico, will be the featured speaker at a program in Pacific Grove on Saturday, Feb. 10. His talk, “From the Tidepools to the Stars,” is scheduled at 2 p.m. at Chautaugua Hall, Central Avenue and 16th Street, Pacific Grove.

 

Ezcurra was president of Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology in 2004 when he joined Stanford University scientists for a “Return to the Sea of Cortez” voyage that is the subject of a current exhibit at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. He is now director of the Biodiversity Research Center of the Californias and provost of the San Diego Natural History Museum.

 

His talk is in conjunction with the “Return to the Sea of Cortez” exhibit, which runs through March 31. The interactive exhibit captures the 2004 recreation of the famous voyage John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts made in 1940, discovering and documenting the kinds of animal life found in the Gulf of California. Steinbeck’s “Log from the Sea of Cortez” is a classic book of marine science, adventure and philosophy.

 

The exhibit includes more than 200 photographs taken by Nancy Burnett, a Monterey Bay Aquarium founder who served as photographer on the 2004 rediscovery. The museum is a block from Chautaugua Hall at Central and Forest Avenues, Pacific Grove. It is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Admission is free. More information: 648-5716, www.pgmuseum.org.