A rare chance to tour “Ed Ricketts’ Pacific Biological Laboratories” at 800 Cannery Row will be offered Saturday, Feb. 24. The annual Steinbeck Birthday tours are given by tour guides from the non-profit Cannery Row Foundation. Steinbeck was born Feb. 27, 1902.
The Lab building is where Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck conceived and planned their 1940 “Voyage of Science and Leisure” to Baja California’s Sea of Cortez on the famed Monterey purse-seiner, the “Western Flyer” and described in Steinbeck’s “The Log from the Sea of Cortez.” Cannery Row Foundation speakers will describe the men’s teamwork.
Limited reservations are now being accepted at tours@canneryrow.org for these public Lab tours, which are two hours each at 10 a.m., 12 noon, and2 p.m. Only 15 visitors per hour are allowed inside the historic building.
Guests are asked to list the tour time requested and the number of persons in the party. Reservations will be confirmed by return e-mail. Emails are preferred, but visitors also can call 831-917-1937 for clarification or further information.
A donation of $15 or more to the Cannery Row Foundation by cash or check at the door is requested. This helps cover the City fees and insurance for use of the facility. Since 1983, the Cannery Row Foundation has helped to support the research on, and exhibition of, Cannery Row’s famous historic, literary, and ecological legacies.
Guests are encouraged to bring cameras, dress in layers, and enjoy a rare opportunity to be inside the Lab for tours by historians, literary scholars, marine biologists, and Cannery Row Foundation docents (“Row Rat” volunteers).
Refreshments will be available and visitors will have a chance to wander Pacific Biological Laboratories. Ricketts’ actual basement Lab also will be open, with some of his original equipment and specimens on display.
