[CINC] The sad Sea of Cortez

[Paul Petrich]

Dear Ocean People,
 Harper's Magazin, in this August's issue, has published an article entitled "Emptying the World's Aquarium." It is a sad story about the steady demise of what "Jacques Cousteau once called the Aquarium of the World", citing the Gulf of California's ( Sea of Cortez ) both extraordinary variety of life and its accessible bounty." In many ways , this sprawling sea is the world's ocean writ small, with varying of temperatures and sea floors supporting 950 species  of fish, 10 % of which are found no where else. The article can not be accessed on line unless you are a subscriber, but the magazine issue is on sale right now.
 I see it as a perfect example of what a lack of sustainable regulation and scientifically based management will reap on a wider scale throughout our wider world oceans > if we remain blind to its lesson. The article is written by Erik Vance, a science writer based in Mexico City. His work on this article was based supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. 
 As the unfolding story of overfishing species after species is described, two contrary rays of hope are described as possible positives for this once thriving global fishery. One deals with the relatively sustainable fishery in San Felipe, just to the south of a government preserve in the north end of the sea, established to protect the endangered totoabata fish and vaquita porpoise in the 1990s. The other is the recent super-abundance of so-called cannonball jellies now so thick in some of the sea's waters one can pluck them out by hand. Now there is a fisheries for them if they are salted and sent to China as a bland sort of staple. Fishermen can scoop them up in amounts that come close to swapping their boats. The article concludes with the observation that "no one knows for sure where the jellies came from, but for the moment, they don't seam to have any competition or predators. And it's not likely they are going anywhere anytime soon."    Paul Petrich