CEDO is the Intercultural Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans, or in Spanish, El Centro Intercultural de Estudios de Desiertos y Océanos. In 1980 CEDO opened, beginning our long journey. Our headquarters are in, and have always been in, Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, México, in the biogically rich and beautiful Northern Gulf of California.

Our mission:  The mission of CEDO is to advance and share knowledge about the Upper Gulf of California and surrounding Sonoran Desert and promote conservation and sustainable use its natural and cultural resources. 

Our profile:  In a unique, collaborative, intercultural effort of independent Mexican and U.S. non-profit organizations, CEDO provides an educational resource center and field station, and develops and implements scientific, cultural and environmental programs and materials for a multicultural community including residents, visitors, students, scientists and organizations of the bioregion.  

Over the course of CEDO's 30-year history, we have become a bi-national and bi-cultural organization focusing on three very important areas: research, education and conservation in the Northern Gulf. As an integral part of our work, CEDO offers the public a variety of eco-adventures and welcomes researchers, school groups and other organizations to use our field station and teaching resources in support of hands-on learning. Information is power, and the more CEDO learns about this region, the more important it is to share, collaborate and disseminate what we learn with the local community, its businesses and its residents.  

CEDO currently employs over 30 individuals, and all but 3 of those persons reside and work fulltime in Mexico.  Our main offices, field station and visitor center are located in the Las Conchas neighborhood of Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico.  We encourage tourists and visitors to come to our facilities and learn more about the projects, research and learning activities that make up the "work" of CEDO.

* Below are pictures of CEDO's field station and main office, named Edificio Agustín Cortés, after Augustín Cortes, a Puerto Peñasco pioneer and avid promoter of scientific initiatives and causes. To view the captions for the photos just move your cursor over them. Click on the pictures for a more detailed and enlarged view. To view more pictures of our field station visit our Facilities page.

The history of how CEDO came to be is both a personal love story and a love story for the beautiful, diverse and unique natural beauty of this region.  CEDO's history also serves as a great example of how a variety of people and institutions can work together in the name of the Northern Gulf and its surrounding desert. 

The CEDO Story: Growing a Conservation Community

In the Beginning (1975-1979)
Peggy Turk Boyer, CEDO's current Executive Director, first visited Puerto Peñasco in 1975, with professors John Hendrickson and Don Thomson of the University of Arizona's Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Department, as part of the UA's thriving marine biology program. They and their students conducted field activities out of a small beach house in Puerto Peñasco owned by a gentleman named José Garcia. The house sat beside an experimental shrimp mariculture enterprise, being operated jointly by the UA's Environmental Research Lab (ERL) and the Centro de Investigación en Ciencia y Tecnología of the Universidad de Sonora (CICTUS).

Carl Hodges, ERL's first director and founder of the affiliated nonprofit Desert Development Foundation (DDF), and CICTUS director, Xico Murrieta, understood the importance of basic marine science, so they began making plans to support and expand the UA marine program. They envisioned a new organization called the Institute for Deserts and Oceans (sound familiar?), or IDO. It would operate out of a new facility located in the Las Conchas housing development east of the shrimp labs and would be supported with profits from the shrimp mariculture commercial enterprise. Nicholas Yensen was hired as the first director in 1978. After a successful fundraising campaign led by Blake Brophy, Yensen was able to convert the unfinished Las Conchas recreation center and office builiding into a simple functional biological field station (the same field station pictured above). He received a grant to travel the world in search of halophytes - salt-tolerant plants that were being raised at Puerto Peñasco using the effluent from the shrimp farm. These plants showed commercial promise for coastal desert regions, where freshwater is scarce. From its beginning, this organization conducted marine biological research with a goal of providing solid science that would enhance and enrich local, sustainable economic endeavors.  This goal remains the foundation of all CEDO's endeavors even today - to provide the knowledge needed to support local families with economic endeavors that can operate with minimal harm to the natural environment.

Programs expand as needs increase (1979-1985)
Now for the love story.  Peggy Turk was a teaching assistant in 1979 as was another University of Arizona student, Ed Boyer.  That summer, Ed's brother, Rick, came down to spend his summer vacation.  Smitten by the field station and its science students, Rick stayed on, studying halophytes and the soon-to-be appointed manager of the field station, Peggy Turk.  That same year, the vaquita was placed on the endangered species list, and interest in doing field research in marine biology at this locatoin grew.  Peggy and her staff of mainly graduate students and volunteers, began holding regularly scheduled nature talks, inviting local community members to the station to assist in a variety of projects and data collection.  Rick, who had been a high school teacher in the States, helped organize regular classes with the nearby CETMAR high school, to provide experiential learning opportunities for local teenagers.  These classes helped CETMAR develop their own aquarium and marine biology labs. In 1985, Peggy Turk and Rick Boyer were married.

CEDO organizes and lays the foundation for today's organization (1986-1990) . . . to be continued.