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| credit: Octavio Aburto Oropeza |
Mexican President Felipe Calderòn announced his decision on June 15th to cancel the huge Cabo Cortez development that threatened the future of Cabo Pulmo Marine Park. The Park, established with the perseverance of a single family whose patriarch, Don Jesus Castro Lucero, was once a pearl diver, is considered one of the most successful marine reserve in the world. The 7,111 hectare reserve was
dedicated in 1995 and became a marine park in 2000. At a time when fish stocks are in step decline elsewhere in the Sea of Cortez, the Park has abundant marine life. In ten years of recovery the biomass has increased 469%. A researcher remarked that he "could never have dreamt of such an extraordinary recovery of marine life at Cabo Pulmo". All of this restoration would have been jeopardized by a mega tourist resort and residential development of 13,000 homes and 30,000 hotel rooms, and a marina with room for 500 yatchs. It would have been another Cancun not too far away from the other tourist mecca at the end of the Baja California peninsula, Cabo San Lucas. The Sea of Cortez has been called the world's aquarium, and indeed it was, even into the middle decades of the 20th century.
When Steinbeck wrote his famous
"Log from the Sea of Cortez" in 1941 documenting his cruise aboard the
Western Flyer to collect invertebrate specimens with his friend and marine laboratory owner, Ed Ricketts, invertebrate species and fish were extravagantly healthy. Even too extravagant for words. Scientists estimate there maybe a thousand fish species swimming in the young sea and at least 5,000 invertibrate species as well as a thousand or more species of marine birds nesting among its many islands. Now, the Gulf of California is suffering from overexploitation. In some areas the sea bed is literally scraped clean by shrimp trawlers. Wild shrimp populations in the northern portion have collapsed, and five species of sea turtle have vanished. Fish have completely disappeared from some reefs in the northern part. 500,000 tons of seafood are taken each year from the Sea of Cortez, representing almost half of Mexico's fishing economy. Thousands of illegal vessels operate there and there is almost no effective enforcement of the rules protecting the eleven reserves already in existence. Cabo Pulmo has been successful primarily because of the intense interest of the Luceros family and their neighbors in protecting their fishing livelihood.
Yes, the preservation of Cabo Pulmo is a victory for conservation and President Calderon should be congratulated, but if the Sea is to survive as a beautiful, almost surreal idyl for humans and still support abundant marine life from the tinniest shrimp to the blue whale leviathan much more must be done to protect it.
