Wow, this has been a difficult blog to write. My positive experiences in Mag Bay were tempered by the severe impact of massive commercial fishing that’s happening in the area. I photographed a lot of it and wrote about it in a draft for this blog that eventually overshadowed all of my other experiences on the trip. As I wrote my "the end of the oceans is nigh" rant, I had every intention of posting these disturbing images but, before I posted it, I decided to consult one of the NGO's working in the region. They have been working for the last five years to lower the impact of commercial fishing.
In the detailed response I got back, it was pointed out, quite rightly, that I didn't have all the facts to fully understand the local issues. I was told that negative press, instead of highlighting the problem and improving it, could quite easily push them backwards. I have since made generous use of the backspace key, highlighting and deleting great swaths of acid-infused copy that announced the official end to the planet as we know it.
I want to believe that there are people out there with the ability and determination to change what is happening, and not just in Mag Bay. For now I will give them the benefit of the doubt in the hope that they are changing things for the better. Their task and responsibility are awesome in their scope. In the meantime, my images will be shipped off to my stock agent to gather digital dust. I just hope that 30 years from now they don’t serve to remind us what we did to this place.
There were so many positive things that happened in Mag Bay. So in the spirit of this sport fishing blog I have chosen to concentrate those experiences. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that that Baja California Sur is one of the most prolific biomass aggregation areas on the planet. Its combination of currents, geography, climate, and isolation produces a natural spigot of life that has few rivals. My trip this year was filled with the promise of the success of last year's Cabo trip, along with research that convinced me that I was going to be in the right place at the right time again this year. I traveled north from the tip of Baja where the photo gods had so blessed me previously-- or perhaps cursed me with an insatiable appetite for the impossible.
I stayed in a small fishing camp at the southernmost tip of Magdalena, which is a pontoon boat and a 30-mile ATV ride along the wide beach of Isla Magdalena from the small fishing town of Lopez Mateau on the Baja peninsula. I was the only guest and, as no one was fluent in English nor I in Spanish, it was a very quiet week. Called the Whale Tale Inn, the camp is a collection of one room casitas or shacks with one main building that serves as the kitchen and dining area. Francisco and Berta do a great job of running the place considering the electricity is supplied by 2 wind generators and solar panels. Fresh water has to be trucked in from the mainland. Showers consist of a plastic camp shower bag and the outhouse is a long hike up a hill. The camp is very basic but the food is good and the view is worth a million bucks!
I had come to Mag for the bait balls of sardine and mackerel that appear here annually which are fed on by ocean predators like marlin and dorado. Last year, Cabo had proved to be an incredible place to shoot striped marlin. What I wanted this year was to photograph dorado feeding on these same giant bait balls. I chose a 22’ panga, the Mexico Lite version of a charter boat, something I had a few occasions to reconsider over the course of the trip. My captain, Polo, was top notch, but that didn't make me feel that much better when we were 30 miles from the closest piece of land with a single outboard, no radio or safety gear, and a hell of a long way from any organized form of rescue. On the first morning I happened to see him making the sign of the cross across his chest and forehead, which soon turned out to be for good reason.
At shows and exhibitions I'm regularly told what a great job I have. I had to remind myself of that several times over the first few days while getting the crap beaten out of me in 25 knot winds and four to six foot seas in this tiny boat with not a single bird, sardine or mackerel in sight. For five days Polo and I floated around the ocean in search of these tiny fish under constant assault from the sea. I didn't know whether to sit or stand, since both hurt in different places on each impact.
The weather improved each day and, thanks to the commercial shark fishermen, there were plenty of buoys to dive under to look for dorado. I got to shoot my fair share of individual fish happy to follow a chum line. By day three the weather was good enough to make the long trek out to Thetis Bank. We shared the bank with some commercial tuna boats for a few hours but for the next four days we had the place all to ourselves. We chased schools of football-sized yellowfin and skipjack tuna around following the hard charging flocks of white terns. I jumped in a number of times with the tuna schools, which kept their distance. They were chasing tiny, two-inch long, blue-colored bait spread flat across the surface, possibly flying fish.
On the second to last day I awoke to a sea that looked like a lake. From the moment the glow of sunrise started off to the east of my little shack, the ocean was alive. Pelicans made high-speed kamikaze dives along the back line of waves that gently folded around the edge of the giant bay. Game fish, probably roosters, joined them from below, driving the bait in silver sheets across the surface. In the absolute still morning air the whooshing sound of their escape made it all the way to the elevated veranda of my casita. What a way to wake up! After a quick stop in the dining room for one of Berta's fantastic breakfast burritos I was off to join Polo on the boat. As the sun rose, I settled into my position on the bow where I had rigged a “ski rope” made from rope and driftwood from the beach. I could now stand and lean back and avoid the bone-crushing ass-pounding I had received the first few days. This day the surface was like glass. As we rounded the point to head northeast, the chop and swells of the days before had collapsed. We sliced along, the reflection of the panga wiggling away from us on the flat, calm surface. Just before we got to Thetis we saw a dorado jump. We slowed the boat and looked overboard.
Whether you call them dorado, mahi-mahi, or dolphin fish, these super fast growing, pelagic game fish are best known for their electric yellow, green, and blue coloring. Their normal color is actually a powder blue with purple and green flecks along their bodies and yellow fins. As they becomes excited during feeding or capture these fish light up like a neon sign on the Vegas strip. Like chameleons, their colors change and flash, probably in a form of communication needed to operate in their big social schools. Inches below the surface and all around the boat their powder blue backs, electric yellow pectoral and caudal fins glided, crisscrossing each other and producing a kaleidoscope of patterns and colors. The sole act of me entering the water excited the fish, and there were hundreds of dorado now circling me, some in the 40-pound range. Bulls with their distinctive, pronounced forehead, and cows with their more slender brow, swam within a few feet of me. I spent the next ten minutes just swimming around with the hunting herd until they dissipated in no particular direction, evidently bored when they realized that I didn't represent a feeding opportunity.
I asked Polo to throw a hookless teaser with the spinning rod. That ignited the action again! The larger males with dorsal fins raised like matadors’ capes, lit up in their flashing yellow, charged. Some attacked from below, rolling on the surface popper, snatching it, shaking their heads against the tension of the monofilament eventually spitting out the epoxy surrogate. Others lit up and followed the lure, backs completely out of the water for a few feet before speeding up, grabbing the popper and exiting at 90 degrees. We would have five or six fish at a time competing for the teaser but even in their excited bright state none would come close enough for a good strike photo. Every few casts Polo would introduce the real hooked version to make sure there was something to take home for dinner. The dorado I had come for were here and looking for the same big schools of sardines and mackerel that could produce the giant silver tornados of bait when attacked. For some reason the regular fall runs of these baitfish had not appeared this year in their usual geographical locations. They were probably a hundred miles out in the right water temperature beyond the reach of our 22’ panga. I was not prepared to dare Polo on that issue.
The rest of the day we teased some wahoo on a flasher and actually had multiple wahoo and dorado swimming together close to the boat but not close enough for great photos. On the two-hour run home I thought about the week I had spent so far from civilization as the only guest in this tiny, rustic camp. I had missed the bait balls, but the solitude and surroundings were worth the schlep involved in getting there. I left Thetis that day with that “now that is why I do this” feeling and remembering that I am indeed lucky to have such a great job.
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