[CINC] Whale Watch Pioneer Extraordinaire

[paul jr petrich]

Ocean and Island People,

 I just finished reading, An Ocean of Inspiration: The John Olguin Story ( Harzen; Brunnick; Schaadt ). I recommend it highly to anyone involved in outreach for the CINMS and the CINP.

 The story illuminates John Olguin as a pivotal pioneer in educating the public toward the preservation and the protection of our local ocean ecosystem. The interpretive methodology we ocean and island people use today to convey the overlapping missions of our CINMS and CINP owe much to this life guard from San Pedro.

 The Olguin story starts in the early 1950s when he turned Grunion runs and tide pool excursions into educational community events at Cabrillo Beach. By the early 1970s he had enlisted and trained a whale watch corps at the Cabrillo Beach Museum which became the model for all whale watch corps all over our country ( including the CINC ). To this end, John Olguin even became the president of the then newly established American Cetacean Society, to better educate and promote his whale watch corps. He encouraged the Society to move its office to San Pedro, and enlisted their advice in creating the first marine mammal watching code for whale watch boats, which still remains the basis of the one we use today. His corps of volunteers fanned out all over the Southern California coastline spreading this code to whale watch skippers ( who he had often recruited ).

 The reader is also told how this lifeguard, without a college education, was the main mover in transforming a small shell collection at the Cabrillo Beach Bath House into a renown interactive museum and marine education facility. After retiring from life guard duties he became its director.

 The "rest of this story" tells us how John Olguin had the Channel Islands in his DNA, as well as the ocean and all living things in it. In their 15 foot rowboat, John and his wife Muriel, rowed over and back to to Santa Catalina Island from San Pedro 12 times! They also rowed to Anacapa from Oxnard, and from island to island. They even circumnavigated Santa Rosa and San Miguel on separate ventures. They always slept in the rowboat. However, one trip they took to Catalina  with John's brother, Leonard, was a week long excursion to Emerald Bay, where-in they all lived off the land and sea, just as he and his brother's Native American Tongva ancestors did. John's father had walked as a young man from Mexico to San Pedro.  John's mother was local native Tongva ( Gabrielino ).   Paul Petrich 

 
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