At the end of every February members and friends of the Cannery Row Foundation gather at Pacific Biological Laboratories (Ed Ricketts’ Lab) with Cannery Row, John Steinbeck, and Ed Ricketts fans from all over the Monterey Peninsula (and far beyond) to honor and celebrate the internationally famous John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts historic, literary, and ecological legacies at Pacific Biological Laboratories on/near John Steinbeck’s birthday (February 27).

The Pacific Biological Laboratories is where Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck conceived and planned their 1940 “Voyage of Science and Leisure” to Baja California’s Sea of Cortez on the famed Monterey purse-seiner, the “Western Flyer” described in Steinbeck’s “The Log from the Sea of Cortez.”

Guests are encouraged to bring cameras, dress in layers, and enjoy a rare opportunity to be inside the Lab for tours by historians, literary scholars, marine biologists, and Cannery Row Foundation docents (“Row Rat” volunteers). Refreshments will be available, and visitors will have a chance to wander Pacific Biological Laboratories. Ricketts’ actual basement Lab also will be open, with some of his original equipment.

Join us at the Lab on February 25 for the new format, two-hour tour.

Limited reservations are now being accepted at tours@canneryrow.org for the public Lab tours, which are two hours each at 10 a.m., 12 noon, and 2 p.m. Only 15 visitors per hour are allowed inside the building. (This is no modern, spacious, squeaky-clean lab!)

Guests are asked to list the tour time requested and the number of persons in the party. Reservations will be confirmed by return e-mail. Emails are preferred, but visitors also can call (831) 236-2990 with the information.

A donation of $15 or more to the Cannery Row Foundation by cash or check at the door is requested. Since 1983, the Cannery Row Foundation has helped to support the research and exhibition of Cannery Row’s famous historic, literary, and ecological legacies.