Sabbatical winding down, and so this summer I spend my remaining time doing the things most important to me - family time galore; field research in Bahía de los Angeles with Ocean Discovery Institute's Ocean Leaders (and my dear friends and colleagues); working with phenomenal undergraduates (Ric and Amber - more about them later), my current grads, and my newest grad student.

This summer will involve sea turtle by catch reduction work; understanding kleptoplast in sea slugs, long term monitoring of island ecosystems, evaluating ENSO effects on insular plant communities, and several fundulus projects in Mission Bay. Add to that getting to do this work with people I love, including my wife, daughter, delightful colleagues, and an old jr high school friend who is still the dude....tough to feel more blessed, in any sense you care to use that word.

Anyone interested can follow my travels starting Sat by clicking on the following link. It is a fascinating project, supported by quite literally one of the best in the world education teams, working with talented, driven kids.

Every year I get to work in this spectacular place with these phenomenal people. Add to that getting to do it with both new friends ("merely a year") and old, comfortable friends (>40 years), I really am the luckiest man on earth.

So as we go share our knowledge and skills with each other, and do our best to tease apart complicated natural history patterns with our earnest yet blunt tools, it might be interesting to see how we will make insights and progress.

That, at least, is plan....