Beth Horvath

         The study of gorgonian corals began well into my teaching career, during a semester sabbatical in the 2002-2003 academic year.  Within the first month of the sabbatical, the SBMNH acquired nearly the entire collection of Cnidaria specimens from the Allan Hancock Foundation as it disbanded its museum collection housed on Santa Catalina Island.  This was a propitious time to begin a study of gorgonian corals, as the material from the Allan Hancock Foundation is extensive and very diverse.  What started out as a “four-month” sabbatical project, organizing and incorporating the Allan Hancock material into the already established Research Collection of gorgonian corals at SBMNH, became something far more extensive and complex.  Many of the specimens already in the SBMNH collection needed identification (starting from “scratch”), or needed an identification that had already been done confirmed, and specimens from the Allan Hancock Foundation being incorporated into the collection needed to be processed, rebottled, identified and housed.  The assumption of many was that CA waters held perhaps between 12-15 species of gorgonian coral.  The reality is that there are nearly three- to four-times that number of species found in CA waters, thus far, with likely more to be found (ranging from shallow coastal waters to deep sea).  My work with gorgonians began with a very steep learning curve; while I still feel anything close to being an expert on these organisms, I am still likely one of very few researchers working on the taxonomy of gorgonians corals in the eastern North Pacific.   I have described four new species, and have potentially two more species awaiting my attention, needing to be described and proposed as new species.  Gorgonian corals are beautiful organisms, highly “plastic” in phenotypic form, making them a bit of a challenging group to study and identify, but are quite numerous, very diverse, colorful, and have the potential to be extremely important organisms in ecological contexts.