UC Davis Bodega Marine Lab getting some props

Now, I have written here before about the spectacular site for UC Davis' Bodega Marina Lab in Bodega Bay). And lest anyone not believe me, Bodega Bay and the Marine Lab has been written up in the San Francisco Chronicle in an article entitled: Marine lab a spectacular spot on Bodega Bay.

The article lead in is all you really need to know:

Mention Bodega Bay, and the first thing that comes to mind - even now, 45 years later - is Tippi Hedren getting her head pecked by a gaggle of sociopathic seagulls. The town's visitor center hands out 8,000 maps a year pinpointing where Alfred Hitchcock filmed the most memorable scenes of the 1963 classic "The Birds."

But each year, 10,000 to 12,000 people travel to a spectacular spot west of town to visit a less-famous site, the Bodega Marine Laboratory, a UC Davis outpost where about 100 graduate students and scientists study underwater life along the Northern California coast.

Each Friday afternoon, from 2 to 4, docents lead free, hourlong tours that wind through parts of the sprawling complex. It soon becomes clear that visiting a marine lab isn't anything like visiting for-profit aquariums, with their polished tanks and fancy signs. Here, the only live exhibits are a tide pool and three small aquariums.

Mind you, Bodega Bay itself is not the most happening town in the world. But it has a few stores, restaurants and cafes (which they review some of in the Chronicle article). The lab is also the site for the "Workshop in Applied Phylogenetics." One cool thing about this workshop is that the organizers have begun building a Wiki to gather information on phylogenetic methods and tools and this wiki is open to everyone to use and contribute to. So if you are interested in phylogenetics you might want to check out the wiki and start adding to it. And you might want to keep an eye out for announcements for next years course.