Jon Christensen, organizer of the 2004 Sea of Cortez Expedition which returned to Monterey on June 12, will present his group’s findings at Steinbeck Festival in Salinas this weekend.

Christensen delivered the presentation last Friday at a meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in New York.

Christensen, a freelance writer for the New York Times, joined biologists from Hopkins Marine Station earlier this spring for a two-month scientific expedition around Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. The group retraced a 1940 voyage made by John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, recounted in their landmark book The Log from the Sea of Cortez.

Speaking at the conference, an event generally regarded as the world’s foremost annual meeting on conservation biology, Christensen outlined some of the changes witnessed in the region since the 1940 expedition.     

“Parts of the Sea of Cortez were still rich and ferocious with life,” Christensen said, while flying rays jumped out of tropical waters on a giant center-stage screen.  

“We saw large schools of jumbo squid that Ricketts and Steinbeck didn’t find,” Christensen said, as the screen shifted to one of the giant predators feasting on a school of lantern fish. “But, we didn’t see the great numbers of swordfish and tuna that Steinbeck and Ricketts saw.”

Also absent were the scores of sea turtles so prevalent during the 1940 expedition that Steinbeck called the trip a voyage to “the region of the sea turtle.” Throughout their two-month expedition, this year’s crew did not see a single turtle.    

During the voyage, Christensen tried to draw attention to the many scientific institutions and community-based conservation organizations that have flowered in the Sea of Cortez since Steinbeck and Rickett’s voyage. The recent presentation was no different. After a brief opening address, Christensen passed the mike to a series of Mexican biologists and conservationists for the rest of the two and a half hour delivery.  

Notable among the speakers was Unai Markaida, a Mexican biologist who has collaborated with expedition scientist Bill Gilly on studies of giant squid.  Markaida supported Christensen’s comments about squid increases, noting that over 100,000 tons of the once hard-to-find squid were harvested from the Sea of Cortez in 2003. Markaida suggested that their numbers may have exploded in recent years because other predators, including dolphin and yellow tuna, have been heavily depleted.  

“This great productivity [in squid] shows that the Sea of Cortez is not dead, but a living, vibrant sea, a sea that is continuously changing,” Christensen concluded.

Christensen, who is writing a book about the 2004 expedition, will present “Back To The Sea Of Cortez; Sailing With The Spirit Of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts On a New Voyage Of Discovery Around Baja California” at the 24th annual Steinbeck Festival in Salinas on August 6 from 9:00-9:45 am. National Steinbeck Center.