by William Whittenbury
Muskwa Club

William Whittenbury is the president of the Muskwa Club and a sophomore at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School. The Muskwa Club was founded in 2003, and became active in the community in 2010. The club, which encompasses 14 chapters throughout the country at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, provides value-added extracurricular activities and service opportunities to its members. These activities range from a highly successful museum trip program to Muskwa’s largest effort, a project to raise awareness of the vaquita, the world’s most endangered marine mammal.

William became interested in the vaquita after creating a research paper about it for the Los Serenos de Point Vicente junior docent program. Since then, Muskwa has made the vaquita its top priority. The club has spoken to numerous classes and organizations throughout the community, as well as managing awareness tables at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium’s Whale Fiesta and Sea Fair. The club currently plans to create a picture book for young children as well as to continue the classroom presentations.

William will be speaking about the vaquita and the problems facing it today, as well as the great number of possible solutions. He will also speak about Muskwa’s current grass-roots efforts to help the porpoise and the organization’s plans for the future.

The talk is free and open to the public, held at 7:30pm the last Tuesday of the month from September through May each year in the John M Olguin Auditorium at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. The Aquarium is located at 3720 Stephen M. White Drive in San Pedro.

Meet our speaker at a no-host dinner at 6:00pm in the beautiful surroundings of Calle Ocho Mexican Restaurant at 800 S. Pacific Ave., San Pedro, CA 90731 (at the corner of 8th and Pacific Ave.). Plenty of free parking is available in the lot behind the restaurant off 8th Street.