MEXICO
Bays of Angels
Saving an ocean icon in Baja California and beyond
By W.J Nichols
Isidro Arce is a tall, quiet man. He speaks with the authority of one who knows he is right and who has his feet set firmly on the earth.

His friend, Javier Villavicencio, is not quiet. His words come at you fast, complement Isidro’s punctuated wisdom, and fill the air with passionate pleas and clear arguments on why we should have mercy for the animals, deep respect for the seas, and more care for our coastal waters.

Together, these men are the Punta Abreojos Coastkeeper. These men tend the waters surrounding their native Baja California village and prevent the extinction of the creatures inhabiting it.

Water equals life. It covers most of our planet. It governs our climate. It feeds us. It makes our bodies. We breathe because there is water. Water is most certainly our Holiness.

Those who keep the water. Watch over it. Protect it. Guard it. They are our Holy Men.

Twelve kilometers offshore of Punta Abreojos there is an underwater ridge at 40 fathoms. Isidro and I are in his panga floating above it. From here we drop a dozen traps baited with mackerel. When we’ve set the last trap, we return to the first and begin to pull the traps up. The traps are already filled with verdillo, a medium-sized sea bass. Everything that is not verdillo or is under-sized is thrown back. We repeat the circuit several times. Pull the trap. Add bait. Drop the trap.

We’ve had a good morning and reached our quota quickly.
Isidro says, "This area is very productive. We come out here to fish, to supplement our lobstering and abalone. It’s easy to catch fish, but we also take care of this reef."

"Taking care" is part of Isidro’s nature. And by extension, it’s the nature of his community. This means taking only the day’s limit of verdillo, lobster or abalone. Throwing back small fish and gravid female lobsters, or leaving undersized abalone to grow on the rocks.

"If we do this now, we’ll always have something for the future. Our kids can live the way we live. And so can their kids."
Isidro starts the motor and turns the boat towards a nearby comrade. We pull our pangas alongside one another.
"Qué ondas, compa?"
"Nada, nada. Más o menos," comes the reply.

Isidro begins tossing our extra verdillo into the panga of his "compa". So that his friend can go home to his family earlier too.

It’s this camaraderie and community cohesiveness that allows these waters to continue to produce. This past year the fishing cooperative that Punta Abreojos belongs to was certified "sustainable" by the Marine Stewardship Council – the first fishery in Latin America to achieve this sought after eco-label.

Small fish, small lobster, small abalone–and the waters they live in–are tended, guarded, and defended so that the animals will reproduce. So that the cold Pacific currents will run clean. So that there are fish, lobster, and abalone for people. So that there always will be.

Estero Coyote
I’ve arrived to the edge of Estero Coyote. It’s midnight or one. There’s not a light on the water and when my headlights flick off, there’s only the starlight.

My VHF radio crackles and I’ve raised Isidro on the other end. He’s with Javier and Miguel Valenzuela, the fishing cooperative biologist, out at their tent camp several miles across shallow water, beds of seagrass, and mangrove mazes. They’ve set their net for turtles and will swing my way.

The estero is a small bay – one of eight official sea turtle monitoring sites along the Baja Peninsula. Fishermen and scientists work together to catch, tag, measure, and release turtles once a month. Over the years this will yield valuable data about population trends. It also provides information on these endangered, culturally important, animals that the fishermen and their families trust.

First across the dark water comes the high hum of the panga, growing louder and joined by a signaling headlamp from the bow. I wade through the mudflat shallows, hop into the bow and we’re moving back out. It’s cold and there’s no food in my truck. It’s good to see these guys.

Before we reach the camp we stop to fully inspect the turtle net. It’s exactly the same net used by scores of turtle hunters up and down the coast. Light lead lines allow the turtles to surface. The top line floats between 2 large orange buoys. A pair of inescapable twelve-inch mesh nets of black-tarred nylon twine hang like curtains across the channel, perpendicular to the tidal current.

At other turtle monitoring sites it can take from 12 hours to three days to catch a single sea turtle in these nets. But Estero Coyote is rich and productive. In the time it took to swing around the bay to pick me up, four more turtles are tangled in the nets.

We work quickly, quietly, but with the tension of anticipation and action. The record here at the Punta Abreojos sea turtle monitoring site is 40 turtles in 24 hours. We’re on pace to break that record. We clamp numbered tags on the rear flippers.

Javier measures the lengths of the carapaces, barks the numbers from both tags and caliper. Miguel repeats the numbers and writes on the forms. We all lift the suspended turtle to get a weight. The largest is nearly 150 lbs.

The four turtles are back into the dark warm night and they glide away, bioluminescent coils in their wake. Angels of the bay.

But the point isn’t breaking records, it’s much bigger than that. Isidro, Javier and Miguel take great pride that their sea turtles are coming back. They pin the nascent recovery to the same newfound spirit that guides their fishing – take what you need, protect what should be protected, self-enforce within the community, and teach the children well.

Punta Abreojos Elementary School
It’s "sea turtle day" at the Punta Abreojos Elementary School. Every white-uniformed kid in town is packed into the auditorium. Isidro is beaming like a lighthouse. Tall and instructive.

"We must teach the children," he explains to me, pumping his fist in the air. Of course, he’s right.

When he’s not fishing, or enforcing fisheries regulations in the community, Isidro is dreaming up new ways to "teach the children."

"I was thinking that the kids use pencils, right? They hold pencils ALL DAY!" He’s going somewhere with the story, I’m certain.

"So I made 1,000 pencils with the message SAVE THE SEA
TURTLES…DON’T EAT SEA TURTLES!"

He shows me one of the thousand, a perfect, unsharpened bright red sea turtle conservation tool. He got them for pennies each.
I look around. All of the kids have one.

"These kids are thinking about saving sea turtles every day, ALL day."

Isidro stands to the back of the room as a line of students one-by-one make their well-rehearsed presentations on sea turtle conservation, biology, anatomy, biodiversity and habitats. He beams. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

El Cereso Prison
I’ve never seen the business side of a Mexican prison. My imagination suggests it’s a foul concrete and metal situation, surrounding a tightly wound aberration of humanity. I did take this into account when we suggested to Javier that he visit Francisco "Gordo" Fischer in the El Cereso Prison in La Paz.

On the inside, Javier met with his childhood friend. A man who had made a career and a bundle of cash out of lifting lobster, abalone and sea turtles – legally and illegally – from the waters
surrounding Punta Abreojos.

Gordo had six months in el bote to think about his personal
history. What he might do when he regained his freedom. His miscalculation in taking the ill-fated shortcut through the desert that took him past Punta Abreojos with seven live sea turtles in his vehicle. Those turtles – a meager fraction of the thousands of animals he had trafficked over the years – wound him up in jail.

If he could get out, he would change. Yes, he’d help. He’d give back to the oceans. Gordo agreed then to tell his story of corrupt officials, politicians feasting on endangered species, his back roads and bribes. The details would throw a bright shadowless light on the matter.

Mexico City Televisa studio
Months later in Mexico City Javier, Gordo and I sat on the set of the nation’s highest rated morning news program: Televisa’s Hechos de la Manana. As the team scientist, I set up the biological context and the conservation imperative. Javier drilled the interviewer with the back-story and his personal charisma. Gordo, wearing a black sea turtle conservation t-shirt, leaned back in his chair, then stole the show.

He kept millions of viewers from Chihuahua to Chiapas riveted to their TVs for twenty minutes, over as many cups of coffee and plates of huevos rancheros.

He told uncensored stories that no one in their right mind would dare tell on live national Mexican television. And the producer gave the cameraman the "keep rolling" signal four times.

Something shifted in the air, on the airwaves, across the geography of the country as he spoke without fear, as if confessing a lifetime of sins to the Pope himself. The convicted turtle thief faced the Channel 2 interviewer and the cold, merciless camera lens. In this public confessional box, a former poacher found reconciliation and spoke up to save sea turtles from extinction.

In the afternoon Gordo visited La Basilica de Guadalupe. To pray, he said.

That night at dinner, Gordo leaned toward Javier with a napkin. "You still have some of that crappy TV makeup on you." He wiped it off. We laughed. We laughed until it hurt.

Jose Ortega y Gasset, Spain’s most famous philosopher wrote "Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do."

There really are no useful blueprints that ensure compassionate friendships. That steer humans to protect nature. That guide the building of true communities. Or that tell us how to raise our children.

And when these streams of humanity cross, braid, and mix as they do—we are on our own to find our way through these holy waters, together.

Dr. Wallace J. Nichols is Director of the Pacific Ocean Region at the Blue Ocean Institute and Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences.