Prof. Richard Astro: “Breaking Through.” Drexel University, Philadelphia: started the 1970s academic revolution that required knowing Ed Ricketts before understanding John Steinbeck. He was Keynote Speaker at the formation of the Cannery Row Foundation at its first “Great Cannery Row Reunion” in 1983, and the 2005 Cannery Row Reunion, also held at the Monterey Conference Center. He was the opening speaker at the 2015 CANNERY ROW SYMPOSIUM.

  Prof. Kevin Bailey: “The Western Flyer and The Saga of Pacific Fisheries.” This retired Marine Biologist and Pacific Coast Fisheries authority’s recent book (2015)—"THE WESTERN FLYER, Steinbeck’s Boat, the Sea of Cortez, and the Saga of Pacific Fisheries"—traces the depletion and collapse of major Pacific fisheries through the voyages of a single world-famous boat, which upon restoration will home port again in Monterey. His book is a must for Steinbeck and Ricketts readers and marine ecologists everywhere.

    Dennis Fry: “Tales from an Alaska skipper of the ‘Western Flyer’ as the ‘Gemini’ and What I’ve Got To Show For it.” His father, Clarence Fry, bought the Gemini in 1976 and converted it from chain steering to hydraulic controls. Dennis occasionally skippered the family-owned and operated the Gemini (Western Flyer) in the late 1970s in a number of fisheries from Homer, Alaska. He was to present a big surprise for the Symposium but it could not be kept secret.

   Prof. Bill Gilly: “To the Sea of Cortez in the Wake of the Western Flyer.” Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station, authority on squid; organized the voyage of the Gus D in 2004 to replicate the route to the Sea of Cortez collection locations by the Steinbeck-Ricketts expedition to the Gulf of California in 1940 aboard the Western Flyer.

    John Gregg: “Restoration of the Western Flyer.” Marine geologist and new owner of the Western Flyer and the force behind her future as a sea-going classroom to inspire kids into the marine sciences; he himself was inspired into his field in his youth by Ed Ricketts’ Between Pacific Tides inter-tidal handbook (Stanford University Press best seller) and John Steinbeck’s Log From The Sea of Cortez. John and his brother Andy made the surprise Public Announcement of the rescue and restoration vision for their world-famous Western Flyer at the CRF February 20th, 2015’s SYMPOSIUM at Hopkins Marine Station. 

    Michael Kenneth Hemp (Master of Ceremonies): “Ed Ricketts’ Pacific Biological Laboratories contact card files recovered.” Cannery Row historian and Cannery Row Ricketts and Steinbeck authority; 1983 creator of the Cannery Row Foundation and currently President of the Board of Directors; owner of The History Company; consultant to the Western Flyer; creator and producer of the Cannery Row Symposiums. He recounts the recovery and return of Ed Ricketts' missing business card file boxes from the Lab fire of 1936 to his son, Ed Ricketts, Jr.

    Donald Kohrs: “E.F. Ricketts and Jack Calvin: The Publication of  Between Pacific Tides, 1939." Don Kohrs—Librarian of the Harold A. Miller Library of Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University—is the hottest groundbreaking Ed Ricketts researcher anywhere. This presentation is part of his substantial new and previously unknown research detail that is re-writing much of what has been previously understood about America’s most famous ecologist, Edward. F. Ricketts.

   Prof. Susan Shillinglaw: "'He aches me like a missing arm': Steinbeck's Ricketts and Ricketts' Steinbeck.'" Professor of English at San Jose State University; former Director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University. She teaches English at San Jose State University as the leading Steinbeck and Ricketts scholar in the country. She is now Director of the National Steinbeck Center (Salinas), and has been a Cannery Row Foundation Board Member for years.

    Prof. Steve Webster: “An Addiction to the Sea of Cortez I’ve shared with Ed Ricketts; (subtitle) And stuff Steinbeck and Ricketts never saw.” One of the original group of conceptual developers of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, with the perspective of a Cannery Row marine biologist’s career and his 101 trips to the sea of Cortez. He explains his personal appreciation of the addiction to the Sea of Cortez he’s shared with Ed Ricketts.