January, 2000 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 9 
Seashore Guide: Common Marine Life of the 
Northern California Coast and Adjacent Shores 
(Mad River Press, 1978), and Invertebrates 
(Sinauer Associates, 1990). His “Annotated 
Keys to the Hyperiidea of North American 
Coastal Waters” (Allan Hancock Foundation 
Tech. Rpts. 5:1-76,1981) is a benchmark 
summary for the hyperiid (pelagic) amphipods 
of North America. Gary also authored a general 
text on embryology (General Patterns of 
Invertebrate Development., 1975, Mad River 
Press). However, for students of the California 
coast Gary may be best remembered for his 
excellence in the classroom and the field where 
he trained legions of marine biology students 
over the years at University of the Pacific 
(1964-1967) and Humboldt State University 
(1967-1998). 
One of his greatest joys in life were early 
morning field trips with students, arriving at 
the coast just as the sun was rising and the fog 
was lifting on those cold gray northern 
California beaches. From 1967 to 1990, Gary 
won countless awards in recognition of his 
teaching excellence, including the “Cal Poly 
Honored Alumnus in Science and Math” 
award. But more of interest to many was the 
fact that Gary was one of a small group of 
Pacific coast biologists who carried on the 
legacy of Ed Ricketts and Joel Hedgpeth. He 
was co-founder and publisher of The 
Stomatopod, an eclectic and irreverent biology 
journal in the tradition of the 60’s and early 
70’s, that entertained and educated Pacific 
coast biologists for many years. Gary’s 
minimalistic poetry, collectively published 
under the pseudonym “Waren Stauls” (Nature’s 
Laws. Selected Poems of Waren Stauls) 
followed in the tradition of Joel Hedgpeth’s 
books published under the pseudonym Jerome 
Tichner (Poems in Contempt of Progress, 
Scattered Poems). Gary retired in 1999, 
moving to the Sacramento (CA) area, where 
his wife Julie, 5 children, and 2 grandchildren 
survive him. At the time of his death, he and I 
were working on a new general zoology text 
(Concepts in Zoology, for Saunders 
Publishing) and revisions of our Invertebrates 
text and California seashore guide. Cards can 
be sent to Gary’s family c/o of: Julie Brusca, 
8058 Orange Ave., Fair Oaks, CA 95628. 
FROM “NATURE’S LAWS”: 
Life is too 
short to let 
yesterday 
destroy today, 
but never forget that 
tomorrow you may need 
a memory - 
and it will be there.” 
Richard C. Brusca 
Senior Research Scientist and Interim Director 
of Education 
Columbia University Biosphere 2 Center 
[reprinted with the author’s permission from 
the CrustL list server] 
“The passing of Gary is especially sad for me. 
Gary was my first graduate advisor while he 
was at the University of the Pacific, bringing 
me into the marine sciences and crustacean 
studies when I was real young, having entered 
graduate school at 19. He set a strong tone of 
excellence in thought and enjoyment in 
research. The early morning field trips weren’t 
onerous with Gary, but that’s not to say they 
weren’t painful. He made them a lot of fun and 
true adventures. But what I remember most 
about him was the detail of his courses. I can 
say with some conviction that most of the 
invertebrate knowledge I have at my fingertips 
I acquired in Gary’s classes. Every course had 
long, detailed phylogenetic arguments at their 
core — not because we all had good answers or 
even techniques in those days for discussing 
phylogeny, but because you had to master the 
details to be able to argue anything. Gary 
knew the details and if your argument violated 
some feature of morphology, you were 
informed in short order. Perhaps the most 
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