Kayaking in Sea of Cortez: Jellyfish and Stingrays Day 23

I awoke in Sea of Cortez at my camp at Cabo San Miguel at about 5:30 to see high wispy clouds in an otherwise clear sky.  I went for my usual walk in the backcountry and found another large saline lagoon with some ducks and least sandpipers. I launched at about 6:30 and after 2 1/2 hours of paddling, I arrived near Punta Paulito for brunch.  I passed by one whale that was feeding back and forth about 400 yards offshore.  I went out to get a closer look but then he moved away.  This whale looked smaller, like a California gray whale.

I’ve seen many ospreys along the coast, but here I saw one on a nest that seemed to be accessible to coyotes.  I was surprised the osprey had built its nest at that vulnerable location because it would be difficult to defend it from the coyotes.  

To pass the time, I began counting stingrays as I paddled in shallow water along a long sandy beach.  As I counted them, I noticed that they were more frequent than I thought. There was at least one stingray at every location where the sand looked mottled as they tried to cover their grey backs with sand for concealment.  There were almost always two or three visible any time I looked down into the water.  

I landed for lunch at the first sandy spot about 1/2 mile south of Punta San Juan Batista. Nearby there was a low rocky area with tidal and subtidal rocky flats that extended out about 1/2 mile or more.  The water was very silty or maybe turbid with algae and I could only see about 2 feet through the water.  Thick floating algae mats were almost continuous about 1/2 mile from shore.  The mats of algae were so thick they looked almost like sandbars. I searched the shoreline to the south with my binoculars and there did not seem to be many sandy beaches, just rocky shores.  About one mile ahead there was a prominent volcano with yellow slopes. When I got closer to the volcano, I landed to explore the slopes and I found that the yellow color on the slopes was a blanket of small yellow-orange flowers growing in sandy areas.

I landed about one mile south of Punta Gorda at the 28th parallel, border of Baja Norte and Baja Sur.  The southern end of the Baja Peninsula is further east than the north and there is a time change in Baja Sur: I was now on Mountain Time.  Of course, my daily life was not driven by the clock, instead it was the sun, the moon, and the wind that determined everything that I did. When I landed, I sat exhausted for about 30 minutes.  I must have gone about 14-15 miles today.  The last 6-8 miles were uninspiring, low pebble shore, no cliffs, with 2 feet of visibility in the water and not much to see.  I did come across many jellyfish about 1-2 feet in diameter all along the shore.  They were all floating with the bell up and seem to be distressed or dying. There were some that were washing right in the surf and there were also some on the beach.

During recent years, jellyfish “blooms” have been noted in many parts of the world and an international symposium was held on the subject in 2000. In some places, jellyfish and bacteria are almost all that remain after all the desirable species have been fished out.  Here in the Sea of Cortez, sea turtles used to graze on jellyfish.  Sea turtles are easy to catch because they must come to the surface to breathe, and they can be worth hundreds of dollars to a lucky fisherman.  I had traveled almost 250 miles down the coast and had only seen one sea turtle.  For me, one of the most beautiful sights to see is a large jellyfish, pulsing through the water.  But make no mistake about it, seeing lots of jellyfish means that there are no sea turtles here. The numerous jellyfish are a sign of a degraded coastal environment, and it is very difficult to imagine how full of life this ocean used to be. 

In a 2010 article titled “Jellyfish: The Next King of the Sea” in Smithsonian Magazine, Abigail Tucker wrote: “The news media have tried out various names for this new plague: “the jellyfish typhoon,” “the rise of slime,” “the spineless menace.” Nobody knows exactly what’s behind it, but there’s a queasy sense among scientists that jellyfish just might be avengers from the deep, repaying all the insults we’ve heaped on the world’s oceans.” And, “It’s hard to tell what may be causing jellyfish to proliferate. The fishing industry has depleted populations of big predators such as red tuna, swordfish and sea turtles that feed on jellyfish. And when small, plankton-eating fish such as anchovies are overharvested, jellies flourish, gorging on plankton and reproducing to their hearts’ content (if they had hearts, that is).”

Can the Sea of Cortez ever recover? Tom Knudson, writing in the Sacramento Bee, tried to be optimistic, but then he had to face reality. He wrote:

The sea is a recovery project waiting to happen. Nature provides the essentials: the desert sun, the sheltering Baja Peninsula, the nutrient-rich upwellings, the great fluid galaxies of plankton, the Pacific portal. The machinery is in place.

Today, reality has dulled the picture. The sea is being brutally overfished. Overfishing, though, doesn’t begin to describe it. The sea is being strip-mined; its kaleidoscopic marine life converted into everything from shark fin soup to fish tacos.   And it’s happening fast. The sea is a vast piece of machinery — composed of billions of moving parts. But whole segments are being stripped away before anyone knows how they work or fit into the larger whole.

The water was amazingly calm and flat for this open exposed beach.  I’ve had seven straight days of hardly any wind.  Today started with high clouds that got thicker all day.  Some of the time it was impossible to distinguish between the milky sea surface and the sky. There was no horizon.  The beach that I landed on for the night was composed of black sand and pebbles. Behind it was a huge area of black sand dunes with a pair of Osprey nesting on top of a tall cactus in the middle of the sand dunes.

I’m on the last map sheet from the book.  I started out with six map sheets, the first with San Felipe on it and the last had Santa Rosalia.  Each sheet covers about 60 miles, so I am getting near the end, down to the last 60 miles. I figure I have about five days to go at 11-12 miles per day.

Next: Day 24 – I Took a Short Cut, Wrong!

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