At 5:30p on October 6th, we opened the doors for the Block Party on the Bluff and hundreds of you poured through. It reminded me of a (civil) Black Friday sale for the new Playstation console.

Perhaps you came to celebrate our new exhibit about the science and solutions for the local impacts of climate change. Perhaps it was the live music. Or you came to mark a special day–happy birthday, Maya.

Hundreds lined up on the bluffs to revel in the late summer sunset. Parents flowed with Alwa Gordon while their children experimented with wave power. UCSC students rocked with Juicebox Santa Cruz while bumping into solutions to local urban flooding. A Mayor chuckled with friends between an octopus and a swell shark. High schoolers sipped (crunched?) on shaved ice with wildlife corridors and bioplastics on the mind.

Nearly 2,000 of us–with eighty years separating the youngest and eldest–celebrated a reimagined Seymour Center designed for this exact purpose. Thank you.

This is how a community will advance science and solutions to the local impacts of climate change. We’ll do it like we do everything in Santa Cruz. With vibrancy. Creativity. Celebration and joy. We’ll embrace science and embrace each other. We’ll take the dour term “climate action” and Santa Cruzify it. We’ll make it weird and inclusive and super-charged.

Let’s do it together.

We invite you to bring your own passion and brilliance and share it here. Do you believe your work, hobby, or education connects to marine science and/or local climate solutions? Is there something you’ve been dying to share but haven’t known where to begin?

Start here. Start at Seymour Center. Get in touch. We’ve begun developing our events calendar for 2024, and we want to hear your wackiest idea.

The kinds of events and experiences we are bringing to you are evolving. As is our iconic blue whale skeleton, Ms. Blue. Soon, Ms. Blue will be lowered to the ground because the structure holding her up has become unstable and unsafe. We had a beautiful ceremony for her this past Sunday and I was overjoyed with all the love our community shared for her.

In the coming months, we plan to launch a community-engaged process to figure out, together, the next phase for Ms. Blue. If you’re interested in getting involved or financially supporting the project, please contact me.

All my best,
Jonathan