CGP Memorial Fund News

Silver Strand Elementary School 5th Grade students found hundreds of pieces of plastic and other assorted garbage washed up on the shore of Silver Strand Beach after a storm in December last year. 

The CGP Fund recognized this as a learning opportunity for our youth and intervened by requesting the students play a role in ocean stewardship.  The Silver Strand Elementary faculty delightfully agreed and had fun with their students going to work and cleaning up bags and bags of plastic trash before it could wash back into the ocean.  The children showed extra exuberance knowing that they were helping to clear a path for Santa to land his sleigh in a few days from then.  Activities as this play a vital role in protecting marine life and demonstrating ocean stewardship which are the cornerstones of the CGP Fund. By all reports the students were thrilled to be contributing to our oceans’ health in this way, as well as excited to get out of the classroom for a few hours!  To reinforce the students for their hard work the CGP fund awarded each 5th grade class $200 to spend on school supplies.

The CGP Memorial Fund invites you to join us on Friday, March 2 at 7:00 PM for a night of hockey at the Valley View Casino Center where the San Diego Gulls will play the Ontario Reign!  It’s $2.00 Bud Light night at the rink, and if you’re super adventurous, you can go out on the rink after the game for a hockey lesson!

Tickets are $30 ($27 face value), and all proceeds will go to the CGP Fund.  You can purchase your tickets on our Events page, and we can’t wait to see you there!

We are excited to announce that in September the CGP Fund teamed up with the PREUSS School to offer a marine mammal course as part of the high school and middle school’s science program!  With support from the National Marine Mammal Foundation, volunteers will make presentations to PREUSS students on various topics relating to marine mammals.  We are extremely proud of this partnership, and we can’t wait to teach these students about marine mammals, why they are important, and how science plays a role in just about everything we do!

The 4th Annual Coll’s Night at the Park was a huge success, thanks to our many friends and family who came out to join us for a day at the ballpark!  Though the Giants lost, it was so much fun celebrating Coll’s memory with everyone who participated.  A special thanks to the Tilted Kilt for hosting us again for our pre-game festivities, and an even bigger thanks to those who supported the fundraiser by both attending the game or purchasing a shirt – we had friends from the East Coast to Hawaii and everywhere in between rocking our shirt on July 16!  Thanks so much everyone, and we can’t wait to see you at next year’s event!

Purchase Tickets Here!

The Coll Perske Memorial Fund is excited to announce that we will provide up to two $200 awards for student members of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) to attend the 22nd Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals.  This conference will be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada from October 22-27, 2017.  Undergraduate or Graduate students that have been selected for oral presentations regarding research with pinnipeds may apply.  The application due date will be determined once abstracts have been chosen by the SMM.

Award winners will be chosen based on the quality of their abstracts and the alignment of their research with the interests of the Coll Perske Memorial Fund. Special consideration will be given to research projects with California sea lions, which were of special importance to Coll.

To apply, please send the following material to cgpfund@gmail.com:

1)   A copy of the abstract submitted to the SMM conference

2)   Proof of registration for the SMM conference

3)   Proof of acceptance for an oral presentation

Award winners will be notified by July 31, 2017.

Happy New Year, All!

We just held our first meeting of 2017 where we discussed the following:

• To help remind us of the awesomeness that was Coll, we start each meeting off by telling a fun story about him.  This month’s story included his love for “B Movies” (Sharknado, anyone?!), and how proud he was of the fact that Triassic Attack was filmed in the backyard of his high school home in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Lesser known fact about this movie – it was the first role for Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones (which he also happened to love).  So Daenerys was running around his backyard, and he never shut up about it.
• We discussed future fundraising efforts and potential ideas for our upcoming Summer 2017 project.  More info to come soon on the 2017 project!
• We also discussed dates for this year’s Night at the Park, and we’ll be sure to fill you all in as soon as it has been confirmed.

Thanks for checking in, and feel free to leave us a note on the Contact Us page!