The Channel Islands Maritime Museum is pleased to welcome author Corinne Heyning Laverty to its next Speaker Series event on Wednesday, September 21, 2022. She will be speaking on her remarkable book North America’s Galapagos: The Historic Channel Islands Biological Survey. 

This book recounts the story of a group of researchers, naturalists, adventurers, cooks, immigrants, and scientifically curious teenagers who came together in the late 1930s to embark upon a series of ambitious expeditions never before, or since, attempted. Their mission: to piece together the broken shards of the Channel Islands’ history and evolution. California’s eight Channel Islands, sometimes called “North America’s Galapagos,” each support unique ecosystems with varied flora and fauna and differing human histories. This untold saga of adventure, discovery, and goals abandoned is juxtaposed against the fresh successes of a new generation of Channel Island scholars.

Ms. Laverty’s presentation is one of the events surrounding the Museum’s next temporary exhibition Resilience: Art of the Channel Islands. The exhibition opens on September 9, 2022 and will run through December 19, 2022. The exhibition is sponsored, in part, by Vintage Marina and Island Packers.

Admission to the CIMM Speaker Series is free for CIMM members, $10 for adults, and $5 for seniors (62+) and active military members. Doors open at 6:30 pm, with the presentation beginning at 7:00 pm.

About Corinne Heyning Laverty

Ms. Laverty is a research associate and fellow at the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County, an associate of the Santa Cruz Island Foundation and a member of the All Eight Club, a geographic organization that tracks the people who have ever set foot on all eight Channel Islands (of which there have only been 223). Her work has appeared in Lonely Planet, Western North American Naturalist, Eco Traveler, WhaleWatcher, Pacific Currents and Hippocampus Magazine, among other publications.

About the Channel Islands Maritime Museum

Located in Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor, the Museum’s galleries feature rare and beautiful maritime paintings dating back to the 1600s, more than sixty world-class models of historic ships, rotating thematic fine arts exhibitions, and interactive exhibits that encourage visitors to expand their horizons about everything maritime. The Museum is currently open Thursday-Monday from 12 pm to 4 pm. www.cimmvc.org

Editor’s Note: this story was published Aug. 25, 2022.