My parents' marriage was against the law in Maryland in 1966, so they moved west. By the time I was born in 1973, they had settled in Monterey County, California—the same year the last cannery on Cannery Row shut down. The Hovden Cannery closed its doors, marking the end of an era. Where it stood, the Monterey Bay Aquarium would eventually rise, a monument to what we'd lost and hoped to restore.

When I was 12, in 1985, I became a guide at that aquarium—the youngest in my class. Standing in a building literally constructed on cannery ruins, I told visitors about kelp forests, sea otters, and the remarkable return of the sardines. Through the 1980s and 1990s, they came back. The ocean, given a chance to rest, proved resilient.

As a kid who often felt out of place in the local community, th

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