Joel Hedgpeth & 'Doc' Ed Ricketts Acknowledge Richard Brusca:
".... the ultimate source book for the marine invertebrates (one that would satisfy Ricketts) has since been achieved by Richard Brusca's monumental 1980 vade mecum, Common Intertidal Invertebrates of the Gulf of California..."
in
John Steinbeck: A Late-Blooming Environmentalist
by Joel Hedgpeth
1997
Chapter 17
Steinbeck and the Environment -Interdisciplinary Approaches
Edited by Susan Beegel, Susan Shillinglaw, and Wesley Tiffney
University of Alabama Press
Anemone Anthopleura
by
Robert 'Roy' J. van de Hoek
May 15, 2001
Malibu, California
A contemporary and colleague of both John Steinbeck and Edward Ricketts, Joel Hedgpeth is also a native Californian, marine biologist, editor of Between Pacific Tides,and recipient of the Browning Award for Conserving the Environment. In short, he is eminently well equipped to discuss the coevolution of Steinbeck's environmental consciousness with that of the nation at large. Hedgpeth, who defines environmentalism as the recognition that "the human race is exceeding the earth's carrying capacity at an exponential rate by overpopulation" and that "continued exploitation of the earth's resources to support our elaborate material culture is not sustainable," concludes that Steinbeck's most sophisticated thinking about the environment occurs in his later works, especially inAmerica and Americans (1966), now sadly out of print.
Joel Hedgpeth now also recognizes the hard work of Richard Brusca in his book called COMMON INTERTIDAL INVERTEBRATES OF THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA.
