When America sneezes,
Mexico catches pneumonia.
Mexican expression
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Mural by Gabby Gomez
Indigente or Indigent - First place tied with mural below
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Another return to Puerto Peñasco,
we are not feeling as much like tourists but, perhaps, a bit more like
locals. We keep finding out more about what
it is like to live here rather than visit here. The longer we travel, the more we question how
to keep that sense of fulfillment and awe one experiences traveling but while at
‘home’.
A return to a place like Puerto
Peñasco, Mexico, for a third time is helping to enlighten us as to the
reason(s) why it is so difficult. The
longer you live somewhere, the more you care about a place and its people, the
more you start getting involved. The
more you get involved, the more you see through the cracks of politics, people
in control, etc. It is much easier to be
oblivious to all this when discovering a new place, keeping a
sense of wonderment at what you see and experience flows naturally.
It is much harder to do when you
understand the connections, the problems, the missed solutions, etc. It is easy to get ‘hooked on’ traveling and
keep this sense of ‘euphoria’ going from day to day. It takes a little more digging, a little more
time… when returning to a familiar place.
I call it 'Tinnitus of Vision' – like ignoring the constant buzz in your
ear (real tinnitus) we tend to ignore what we see when we have been somewhere a
long time…
The Cultural/Art Front:
To our surprise, a little sprucing
up occurred in Puerto Peñasco since we were here last. A mural contest took place to help beautify
the worst graffitied areas in town. Here
are a few examples of great murals adorning various spaces. The winner took home 7,000 pesos or between
$350 and $400 US. A lot of work for so
little money but worth the recognition. Second and third places received 5,000 and 4,000 pesos respectively.
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| BEFORE |
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AFTER
Great
mural by Izrael Rios, Sept, 2016. Near
Calle 32.
Said
it took three days to paint (seems short – so intricate),
Part
of a contest to help beautify Puerto Peñasco
Seris
- Hombres de la Arena, Seris - Men of the sand
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| By the same artist, Izrael Rios. By steps near the beach. |
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Mural
by Memuco (Guillermo Munro Colosio)– Environmental Art Warrior.
Near boat yard
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Memuco by the
beach
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Memuco's
pimped ride.
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The Sea of Cortez Front:
Excerpts from The Sea of Cortez by David L. Alles, Western Washington University,
2007
The first
major survey of the fauna of the Sea of Cortez was done by marine biologist, Ed
Ricketts, and Nobel prize winning author, John Steinbeck, who cruised the Sea
of Cortez aboard the Western Flyer, a sardine boat from Monterey, California,
from March 17 to April 13, 1940. In that very short timeframe, they made extensive
collections of marine invertebrates as well as making observations of the sea’s
marine life and its human inhabitants.
Combining
science, philosophy and adventure their story was published in the classic book
The Sea of Cortez (1941). Even in 1940, they wrote that over fishing was:
“destroying the ecological balance of the whole region...”
This to
say that since the Sea of Cortez is very prolific, the problems it is facing
today have been going on for a long time.
The
world's youngest sea, the Sea of Cortez was created when the East Pacific Rise
split the Baja Peninsula from Mexico starting ~5 million years ago.
The
Gulf of California is classified as a Class I, highly productive ecosystem
based on phytoplankton production (see
above picture). Only other area NOAA
places in that category is the Gulf of Alaska.
(Class II has moderate productivity, Class III has low productivity).
In
his study of the Gulf of California, Callum M. Roberts (2002) ranked 6th in the
world’s top ten marine biodiversity hot spots for tropical reefs. That is behind South Japan, Western
Australia, Gulf of Guinea, Great Barrier Reef, and Hawaiian Islands.
American
and Japanese ships were the first known to exploit the Sea (as described by
Steinbeck). Now fleets of Mexican fishermen, many unlicensed and ungoverned,
are taking whatever they can as fast as they can for American and Asian
markets.
Of all the
people who have worked against overfishing the Sea of Cortez. one is none other
than the owner of El Cid Resort in Mazatlán, Don Julio Berdegué Aznar (who
passed away in 2007). He was a biologist
originally from Spain who learned that tourism could be another way for locals
to make a living since fishing was diminishing each year. Knowing that gave me a new appreciation for
this resort.
Three
interesting ecologically Sea of Cortez related articles:
The shrimp (aka ‘Pink Gold’ even though they fish blue
and brown shrimp in this area) season officially began September 20th,
before we got back from Australia so the marina is quiet. We hear the dark news from boat owners that
six shrimp boats were impounded by a US NGO (with aid of UAS – Unmanned Aerial
System) and Mexican authorities for supposedly fishing illegally in a protected
area. There is much more to the story
but the NGO now boasts that it proves we cannot trust the Mexicans to control
their own fishing fleets therefore necessitating the involvement of the US. Many posts in the US are asking to sink these
boats and imprison their crew but is the US much different? Sport fishermen are flocking to catch many of
the last large fish in the Sea because there are fewer regulations they must
abide by than in the US.
As it turns out, there are three separate
agencies and each one has different waypoints describing the protected area(s)
in question. Regardless of these
discrepancies, boats and crew had to be held for two weeks while things were
being figured out. They have known of
these closed areas for nearly 15 years…
This is
not to say that shrimp fleets don’t wreak havoc. Shrimping throughout the world
uses bottom-scraping dragnets that haul up 10 pounds of life for every pound of
shrimp, akin to “gathering wild mushrooms with a bulldozer”. If shrimp didn’t reproduce quickly this
method would probably have eliminated them by now. Others caught in these nets however aren’t so
fast at reproducing.
Yet, a small but successful device has helped saved the
lives of turtles and others: The Turtle Excluder Device (TED). TED is a
grid, made of metal bars, that fits into a trawl net. Small animals, such
as shrimp, pass through the grid into the mesh bag and are caught. When
larger animals, such as sea turtles, sharks, and sting rays, enter the trawl
net, they are stopped by the TED and can exit through an opening either at the
top or bottom of the net. Slow and small
progress is being made.
It is interesting to note that even
if a captain (and crew) does something against the rules such as going into a protected
area, nothing happens to them in the long term.
The whole burden of dealing with the agencies/authorities, paying fines,
being reprimanded, is on the owner of the boat.
You certainly need to trust your crew if you own a fishing boat in
Mexico!
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This map shows the current range of
the vaquita (yellow hatching), the Biosphere Reserve
(area above the green
dashed line, which was enacted in part to protect the vaquita,
but which has
been largely ineffective at doing so), the area of the current vaquita
refuge
(blue polygon, in which gillnetting is illegal, but is still occurring), and
the proposed
gillnet exclusion zone (area delineated by the red solid line).
The latter area needs to be made free of gillnets in the next
couple of months
if the vaquita is going to survive.
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Impounding six boats made for great
headlines but it turned out to be due to bad reference points. This supports what we had heard about Mexican
shrimp fishing, that the large commercial shrimpers are highly monitored, it’s mostly
the small pangas who go unnoticed and create so much damage. A meeting was held in Mazatlán so all
agencies should now have comparable data to work from and other meetings have
been requested trying to change rules making boat captains more accountable for
their actions – like fines or loss of their license, etc.
This is not to say shrimping is not
bad for the environment but let’s apply blame where it is due. In this case, it was an error and things have
been done to remedy the issue.
On a side note, a shrimp boat uses
approximately 16,000 gallons of fuel a month or 535 gallons a day! Do the math - - - that is a lot of money just
for fuel, not counting crew, food, repairs, upgrades, etc. The Mexican government does extend a much lower
fuel price to fishing fleets but still…
This season the shrimp catch is
about medium but the prices are high.
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| Vaquita by Frédérique Lucas, www.vaquita.org |
This area is meant to protect the
few vaquitas (around 50-60 last count) left in the Sea of Cortez. Their number was believed to be about 5,000
in 1930. The way commercial shrimp boats operate does not usually lead to by-catch
of vaquitas, much smaller vessels do when gillnet-fishing for totoaba (type of
drum fish), shark, ray, mackerel, or chano (milkfish).
Throughout
the 1980s and 1990s it was established that vaquita live solely in the
northernmost part of the Gulf of California, thus having the most limited
distribution of any cetacean. The vaquita is unique among the porpoises as it is the only species of that family found in warm waters, and the size of the dorsal fin is believed to be an adaptation to that, allowing for extra body heat to dissipate.
Since then
many new rules and regulations have come up, been followed for a short while,
disregarded, come up again, etc. It
seems like the whole history of fishing/overfishing moves ahead one foot, and
backwards two. We are never going to the
real source of the problem: the buyers who are willing to pay exorbitant prices,
an allure few poor and mostly uneducated people can resist.
For five years, the Government
invested more than $30M US in efforts to stop gillnets from being used. It slowed, but did not stop, the decline of
the species. Scientists have warned for almost twenty years that anything short
of eliminating gillnets would be insufficient to prevent the extinction of the
vaquita. Now many believe that vaquita
will become extinct regardless because the genetic pool is too small for
effective reproduction.
There are only seven species of porpoise; the most popular being the widely-distributed harbor porpoise. With the disappearance of the vaquita 14% (one in seven) of porpoise species disappear.
The drying up of the Colorado river
due to damming and distribution of water to farmers and towns is also blamed
for part of the demise of the vaquita. Everything
I read states that the vaquitas that are caught (they are very shy so usually
people only see them dead), are not skinny or in poor health. If the lack of
water coming down from the Colorado had anything to do with a lackluster
nutrition as it is often portrayed, they would show sign of starvation and they
do not. They have quite a varied
diet. However, there may be a link
between salinity and reproduction or salinity and nursing ground for juveniles. So much we don’t know.
Totoaba dehydrated swim bladders
aka ‘Aquatic Cocaine’. The sad part is that the remainder of the
fish is left to rot on the beach! Fishermen receive up to $8,500 for each
kilogram of totoaba swim bladder, equivalent to half a year’s income from legal
fishing activities. For more information
click here.
Not that the lack of sediment and
nutrient-rich freshwater flow doesn’t bring a slew of problems to the Sea of
Cortez. Invasive plants (salt cedar and
cattails) now dominate a mostly desiccated delta, where forests used to
stand. Shellfish, shrimp and waterfowl
have declined dramatically as freshwater has dried up.
Solely putting the blame on easy
target like poor Mexican fishermen rather than also working with the flow of
the Colorado river won’t make much difference in the end. This must be approached by both countries, US
and MX, in order to be successful even if for other species that may soon
follow the fate of the vaquita (little cow).
The Potable Water front:
Last time we were here I mentioned
the lack of water affecting the whole town as well as the town of the Bay of
Los Angeles on the Baja side. We
couldn’t even wash our boat or make water through our RO for lack of
pressure. Trucks with empty water tanks
were sneakily circling the streets at night looking for hoses that could lead them to
water…
We have learned since that a
government change was mostly the culprit, not just mother nature. The new appointees did not have a clue how to
run the water system. They didn’t have
the tribal knowledge that the previous team had accumulated over time. As any good ‘takeover’ they didn’t enlist
their support to keep the water system ‘afloat’… Pipes were bursting in many places, some had
too much water, some none… Chaos
affecting everyone, rich and poor. The
new government invited the old timers back to help but as soon as the authority
thought they had things under control they let them go again. They felt used and vowed not to come
back. It has been months and evidence of
pipes bursting and systems not working properly are still abundant but things
seem to have smoothed a bit. Thankfully resorts are only at 10-30% capacity or
it could have been much worse.
All this to say that it’s not much
different than in most other parts of the world. Politics!
Mexico’s Large Problems Front:
Per Mexican evening news (in
Spanish) the three big problems Mexico face currently are (in order of billions
of dollars in cost!):
1.
Human
trafficking
2.
Drug
cartel
3.
People
illegally siphoning fuel from Pemex gas underground pipelines
Around the world, human trafficking
is valued at about $32B, for the first-time surpassing drug money in Mexico per
the local news. Not sure I can
substantiate this but it still causes us to think/ponder, in my words, a type
of slavery.
People are also finding ingenious
ways of stealing fuel from Pemex and reselling it on the black market. It is so common; the army doesn’t even have
time to get involved…
On the Critter Front:
When stray female animals (cats and
dogs) get neutered, one of their ears gets cut a little shorter to show that
they have had the operation. This way if
they become stray again, vets know if they have had the surgery or not. Clever.
Later we found out they do the same thing in the US, something we were
never aware of before.
On the Fake News Front:
A story is making the rounds in Gringolandia
visiting Puerto Peñasco, that the Mexican Flag and the Virgin of Guadalupe have
been registered or trademarked by China.
Please don’t be fooled, neither of these stories are true.
1. There
are laws against any flag of any nation being registered or trademarked by
anyone (this also applies to coat of arms, certain emblems, etc.). A likeliness of a flag, as long as there are
many changes to it, may be registered or trademarked. Color combinations of a certain flag could be
registered or trademarked but again, only if they are not the exact replica of
that flag.
2. As
for the Virgin of Guadalupe, there is a tiny kernel of truth to this
story. Back in 2002, a Mexican businessman
of Chinese origin named Wu You Lin (there are many Mexican of Chinese origin if
you know your Mexican history) did apply for the registration and got it but only
for a very short while. He never renewed
it and the question later came up if he should have had it in the first place
since the Virgin of Guadalupe has been around since 1531… The issue today is whether the miraculous
image, honored by the hundreds of millions in the Americas can or should belong
to anyone. For now, she is freed.
Anyhow folks - - - not fact based… Traveling shouldn’t stop people from using
common sense or critical thinking and question what they hear. Simply repeating stories unquestionably
doesn’t lead to anything fruitful. As
travelers, we should be good ambassadors of what we see, experience, share with
new worlds, new people.
On the Gift Front:
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| Sweet Corn Tamales |
Thank you, Carlos, for sharing your wife Juanita’s delicious warm homemade flour tortillas and red salsa. An extra thank you for sharing homemade
chorizo, bean, egg or potato burritos and for helping us discover ‘avena’, a
simple warm oat drink with cinnamon, excellent on a cold morning before a run,
a swim or a bike ride. Your enthusiasm
for Mexican food and your friendliness were unparalleled.
Thank you El Calin for the hot
sweet corn tamales. We had, for decades,
only tasted savory tamales. These were
like eating creamy corn pudding. Oh so
good! Good thing we exercise daily or we
would be quite large by now.
Thank you, Manuel, for giving us
beautiful sea shells and thinking of bringing us a local newspaper. Very nice gesture.
As always, we are humbled by your
generosity, you who have so little. And it tastes so much better than any restaurant food. Yum.
On History’s Front:
On the outskirt of Puerto Peñasco,
Choya where there are so many resorts now, didn’t get electricity until 2000! Hard to believe.
On Wedding Front:
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| Beautiful Leah and Clifford |
Two years spending some time in
Puerto Peñasco, two weddings… This time
the youngest daughter married (and the last kid)… A much larger and fancy type of wedding. We felt extremely privileged to attend both. Their message: Thank you for illuminating our dance.
We learned that you tip the servers
and that the men take care of that. We
didn’t know that when we attended the last wedding…
We also learned from a blond hair, fair
skin lady who has been married with a Mexican for 43 years, had 4 children with
him, and speaks perfect Spanish that she is still considered an outsider and
gets charged more for everything than her husband would. How can we possibly ‘blend-in’ with our poor
Spanish and only 4-5 years here!!!
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| Cloudy sunset over pool |
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| Dinner by the Sea |
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| ...and by the pool |
On
Déjàlà’s Front:
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| Two suitcases... |
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| Become this folding origami-like dinghy with side floats as stabilizers when needed. |
New origami
like folding dinghy with side floats to help stabilize it in rough water as
well as a new inflatable stand up paddle-board (not pictured). Now we have to find room for these new
‘toys’. The dinghy fits in two
‘suitcases’, the SUP fits in a small backpack.
Time to
play.
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