Last week I had the opportunity to visit the J. Craig Venter Institute, which is in temporary headquarters in the La Jolla Science Park. A large building is planned for the future on university land. I reminded Craig of my desire to participate in his research in any way I could — especially identifying genomes characteristic of the ocean and land, not necessarily human. He would like me to go out on his boat with him and his staff to participate in an actual ocean survey. His next scheduled trip starts in November and I might go along on the leg from San Diego to Ensenada. Equally interesting to me is to have Craig come with us on one of our trips to Catalina and have him show us how he does his ocean sampling. What I also think might be interesting is to make a systematic survey of ocean samples at various locations around Catalina to see how much diversity exists. I am a hands-on person, so I have been thinking of buying a microscope for the boat to help in the ocean sampling effort.