Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
backed down when Sea World's lawyer responded that he would see
him in court. I suspect he didn't want a spotlight on the tax scam he
was getting away with down there.
Despite all the complicated logistics of organizing an expedition and
the unexpected problems that cropped up, the days of those collect-
ing trips to Baja California were some of the happiest of my life. Every-
thing always seemed to come together. In a way it was like athletics,
when a person's mind and body function as one and the end result is
achieved without conscious thought. There were times later in my life,
after I had taken up waterskiing, when I would feel one with the water
and the ski. At other times, when I would consciously think about what
I wanted to do, neither the end result nor the feeling was ever as good
as when I was skiing “unconsciously,” as it were.
As dissimilar as the three of us were, Bob Kiwala, Kelly McColloch,
and I seemed to work well together. Much has been said in recent years
by organization management trainers about the importance of team-
work, but teams can't be created by force— or by wishes. E¤ective team-
work seems just to happen when the right people come together with
a common goal. Somehow, without trying, we had achieved what it is
to be a “team.”
IN THE DUMPS
Not all of our collecting expeditions were on such a large scale as those
to Cabo San Lucas. One modest but memorable trip was by pickup
truck to just south of San Felipe near the northern end of the Gulf of
California. This was definitely a low-budget expedition (or as some put
it, a real “Crummo Tour”), the object of which was to collect a few
small fishes for one of the small exhibits in Sea World's marine aquar-
ium building. We were after a number of species, but the main quarry
was the juvenile Cortez angelfish. Like most angelfishes, the juvenile
Cortez looks totally di¤erent from the adult—a strategy, apparently,
that allows the young to live side by side with the adults without trig-
gering territorial aggression.
I talked Bob Kiwala into joining me again, and he invited his artist
friend Don Borthwick to come along. Don didn't collect or dive but
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