Some news to ponder...

[La Huerita]

I came across a couple of interesting articles today that are worth a read, and worth some pondering. Both are Baja-related but of some significance to us in RP, too. The first one concerns the ill-conceived marina (now abandoned) at Santa Rosalillita that was part of the Nautical Ladder. It's a lesson about what runaway development can do...

The Ghost Harbor at Santa Rosalillita

By Kristian Beadle

From the vantage point of a wood-trimmed office in Mexico City, the plan must have looked great. Like an arid Mediterranean dream: Modern and sparkling marinas would line the coast of Baja, wealthy yacht owners would sip margaritas in picturesque towns that sprouted from fish camps. The dream is part of the Escalera Nautica, a “stairway” network of harbors along the Mexico coastline, a mega-tourist project created by Fonatur, the federal government developer that produced Cancún and Los Cabos. For now, the Baja stairway is missing a critical rung: The Santa Rosalillita harbor is hibernating.

http://www.miller-mccune.com/environment/the-ghost-harbor-at-santa-rosalillita-17243/

The second one concerns the gray whales. Is it global warming? Is it bad or do we just not understand what's going on yet?

Silence in the Lagoons (Gray Whales)

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/jun/09/city-light-2/

By Alastair Bland
June 9, 2010

For 15 years, Kenny Manzoni of Adventure Rib Rides has been motoring paying customers out of San Diego to watch whales and other marine mammals. He recalls the late 1990s, when he sometimes saw in a single season as many as several hundred gray whale calves, newly born in Baja California and migrating north along the coast with their mothers, bound for their summer sub-Arctic feeding grounds in the Bering Sea.

But this season, between late winter and early spring, Manzoni laid eyes on just six calves.

“It’s been a downward trend for at least the past three years,” Manzoni said. “We’re seeing fewer whales and less calves, with this year probably the fewest ever, and the whales we are seeing appear to be underfed.”

Similarly, observers in Baja have reported fewer pregnant females and births in the shallow waters of San Ignacio and Ojo de Liebre (formerly known as Scammon) lagoons, popular destinations for wintertime whale watchers. According to whale activist Sue Arnold, thousands of breeding and birthing gray whales may crowd into Ojo de Liebre in a normal year. In 2009, however, observers saw only 578. Arnold, who is the chief executive of the California Gray Whale Coalition, visited the lagoons this winter and says it was no better than the last, making 2010 the fourth consecutive year of diminished breeding activity.

Most winters, Arnold says, “You can hear them all across the lagoon, singing and talking, but this year it was silent. It was spooky.”

Click on the link to read the rest.

 

[Stuart]

Personally, I thought the Nautical Ladder was doomed from the start. Oh yeah, it sounded like a great idea when the economy was booming and people were buying boats and going on great adventures. Then the economic reality of the last couple years set in. The purse strings closed; a lot of us are now living much more paycheck-to-paycheck than we ever wanted to be.

The logistics of actually shuffling large yachts and sailboats across the width of Baja is a daunting task. The marina and equipment required to do this requires a significant amount of money and I don't think anyone in their wood-trimmed offices in Mexico City ever really thought the whole thing through. Would there be people willing to pay for this service? Undoubtedly there would be some. But most of the folks that set out for a sea adventure like this are going to make the most of it. By that, I mean sailing all the way down to Cabo and around. For power boaters, you pass some of the best fishing banks in the world on the way, like the Thetis Bank. Sailboaters tend to operate on the cheap. When the wind cost nothing, why pay for land passage? Typically, time is not an issue, either.

Then, there's the whole "Mexico isn't safe" mindset that has really moved into the headlines in the past couple of years. I don't say it's right, but it is there, and a lot of people that may have considered such a trip at one time feel safer sipping margaritas right in their own little harbors at the moment.

I always laughed that the first thing they built was the road. Bass-ackwards, kind of like the "bridge to nowhere." Development should have centered around the marinas on either side. They would be viable even if there was nothing connecting them across Baja. There are so few decent marinas on the Cortez side as it is. Kind of like "If you build it, they will come." Once the two marinas became viable with hotels, restaurants, fuel, services, etc., the road could have been built anytime to connect them.

Ahhh well, what do I know? I'm just a poor fisherman, not a mega-developer.

Sad about the whales, though. The numbers are definitely down. The whales have been the lifeblood of the economy in the Guerro Negro area for many years. No whales, no tourists... another ghost town. Except for the salt mining they do there.

 

[La Huerita]

Back in the late '80s in Cabo there were tons of gray whales, easily seen from shore. Blowing, spy hopping, breaching, slapping their fins on the water. I could watch them from my patio in Cabo Bello, and did so every day. Once during a bright blue morning I saw a particularly large whale steaming toward the Pacific side with all its might, close in to shore, blowing about every 30 seconds, clearly in a hurry to get somewhere. Like it was on a mission from God. With my binoculars I could clearly see its eye when it rose to blow, it was that close. I wonder to this day where it was going and why, and the image is ingrained behind my eyeballs. It was a magnificent sight, a magnificent time.

Yes, it's very sad about the whales...

And I pretty much agree with your assessment of the Nautical Ladder, too. I might have been a bit harsher, though...