Ocean Oasis

Its been snowing off and on all week here in Southern Oregon. I really would like to be somewhere warm with big fish but for now this great video will have to do.

Marketing Baja

Here's a photo of the Beach at Coronado Island one of my favorite spots in Loreto Bay National Marine Park. The shallows that stretch from this beach over to the mainland can hold rooster fish and I have done well along this reef before but have also found plenty of nets here as well. There always seems to be something around at least a few barracuda or giant needlefish.

In continuation of my last post, I wanted to connect the articles on the poor tourist season in Loreto and the continued promises of the vultures bent on turning every beach into yet another "luxury" development. Forgive, my rant but I was heart broken to hear that a few of the timeshare sales people have migrated north from Cabo San Lucas and infected Loreto.

Check out this Baja Nomands forum for some of the ongoing discussion regarding the Mission Hotel. This cool hotel on the water front has been sitting abandoned and thrashed since the mid-1990s. Its a great spot, with the exception of the all night parties on the malecon on weekends, and I've always thought it could be great once again.

I copied this picture from the Baja Nomad Forum taken by Don Alley earlier this month.

The slick La Mission webpage says "Grand Opening November 2008" - you can even make reservations for next week!

Here's what it looks like on the their webpage:

So now in quiet little Loreto we have:

• annoying timeshare sales on the streets and in restaurants
• the failed promises of the Loreto Bay development
• word of large exclusive developments planned at San Bruno
• the beach closed off at Ensanada Blanca
• more marketing talking about sustainability in a place with limited fresh water
• and much, much more - San Basillo? Agua Verde? Conception Bay?

And here's the link that set me off to finally begin writing about this subject:

JW Marriott First Residential Development Comes to Baja, Mexico

Does this sound like a recipe for success? Loreto is an anglers town. No matter how many slick artist's renderings and fancy web pages are produced you can't change the fact that its hard to get to, there is limited water, the cold north wind blows all winter long, and in the summer its stifling with desert heat and Sea of Cortez humidity.

More to come...

Two New Links

I added two new links to my list today.

One is ASUPMATOMA - a great organization protecting nesting sea turtles on the beaches north of Cabo San Lucas. In the summer of 2002 I worked as a volunteer for this group and found some GIGANTIC roosterfish on a hidden beach. I got lots of follows but no bites in the pounding Pacific Surf. I think it would have been impossible to land them with a fly rod in the big beach break but I really wanted to try.

The other link is to Baja Trekker - a great source of information on the ecology and conservation of Baja California's natural resources.

Baja Conservation Links

There are a lot of people doing great things in Baja California. A couple of groups that could use your support are:

Eco Alianza de Loreto is a recently formed group that I look forward to working with in the future.

Propeninsula is a conservation leader in the region especially with the protection of sea turtles and is a member of the Grupo Tortuguero. Propeninsula hosts the annual sea turtle conference in Loreto. Generally in the last weekend in January, the meeting is always a good time.

Iemanya Oceanica works to protect sharks and rays in the Sea of Cortez. These species are critically important to the ecological health of the sea. Several Sea of Cortez guides who specialize in fly fishing are former commercial shark fishers and the one's that I have spoken with prefer the life of a sport fishing captain to the difficult life of commercial shark fishing. The long lines and gill nets used by shark fishers indiscriminately kill many sport fish and damage the ecosystem than sport fish depend on. Hopefully, low impact fly fishing can provide livelihoods for more of these hard working and knowledgeable tiburoneros. I urge everyone to release sharks and until populations of these long-lived and slow growing species can recover, avoid targeting them at all.

The American Fisheries Society has a Mexican Chapter. I plan on contacting them soon and seeing what I can learn about scientific research on fish populations in the Sea of Cortez.

Surf Perch

The thing about fish in Baja is that they can be agressive. This little surf perch is one of the smaller fish I have caught in Baja. Other small fish include bait-sized baby jurelitos (yellowtail), a rainbow wrasse that was barley bigger than my fly, and several sardina that got snagged when I was fishing around bait schools.