by
Joel W. Hedgpeth
Mad River Press 1978
Part 1 Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck Explore the Pacific Coast,128 pages
Part 2 Breaking Through, 182 pages
American Bald Eagle Breaking Through Littoral Crab Flesh Kleptoparasitized From A Great Blue Heron Along The Outer Shores Amidst California Wild Nature
compiled by
Robert Roy J. van de Hoek
March 21, 2001
Vernal (Spring) Equinox
Malibu, California
Excerpt: The Outer Shores Part 2: Page 105
"And at last we have a guidebook to the common invertebrate fauna of the area, primarily by Richard C. Brusca but with assistance of his colleagues, most of them with first-hand acquaintance with northern part of the Gulf of California: A Handbook to the Common Intertidal Invertebrates of the Gulf of CaliforniaUniversity of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1972). This should make possible more serious studies of the region. The illustrations and descriptions are clear enough to make the book useful for the casual fisherman as well, especially those whose curiosity about what they see is strong enough to bring them to such a book in the first place. A new edition is now in press."
CLOSING THOUGHT
by
Robert Roy J. van de Hoek
As Dr. Hedgpeth described so well in The Outer Shores,Dr. Richard Brusca's book is indeed thorough. I particularly like the Introduction which gives a well-grounded overview of the Gulf and even the Salton Sea history. Everyone should read it. As Hedgpeth, noted, there is a new edition that was published in 1980, as a second edition. Of course, I am partial to the first edition, as may copoy is autographed. How that copy came to be autographed is worth telling briefly. It began as I was enrolled at CSUN (Cal State University Northridge) in an upper division Marine Biology course. The professor, Dr. Earl Segal, recommended to us that we enroll in a class entitled: "Natural History of the Fauna & Flora of the Northern Gulf of California. I took this one-week class on Easter week 1978. Lo and behold, Dr. Richard Brusca wasa the instructor. I learned so much in this course. I bought the book on the first day of class at Puerto Penasco. After several trips in his VW Bus to sand flats, negative esteros, rocky tidal reefs, and elsewhere, I also stayed one week longer, to collect marine invertebrates on a Mexican Shrimp Trawler. On our last day of the class, after helping the fishing boat captain get his vehicle unstuck in the sand dune, he invited any of us to go on his boat. However, just three of the 30 students took the Captain up on his offer. It would mean missing a week of classes at CSUN, but the opportunity for exploration and adventure lured me to ride on the boat. When we arrived at the boat, it was almost sitting sideways on the wet mud, as the tide was out. But in a few hours, the boat was in the water sitting straight & tall. We scrounged around for glass bottles and preserving alcohol. Fortunately, we would not need to bring food as the Captain would feed us. The animals collected by us, became our Marine Biology class project. Some of the animals were so difficult to identify, that we took them to Richard Brusca at USC. He personally identified them for us. At that time, I asked him to inscribe my book, which he did cordially. It reads:
"To Roy with warmest regards- See you in Baja- Rick"
