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EveryFish

Reef or sea, Mexico

The Sea of Cortez

The Gulf of California, between Baja California and mainland Mexico, with whale sharks, mobulas and the totoaba.

The Sea of Cortez, or Gulf of California, is a long, narrow sea between the Baja California peninsula and mainland Mexico. Upwelling and strong tides make it very rich in plankton, and it holds around 900 species of fish. Jacques Cousteau is often quoted as calling it the world's aquarium. Its islands and protected areas are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Whale sharks, mobulas and Cabo Pulmo

Young whale sharks gather in the Bay of La Paz to feed on plankton, and huge schools of small mobula rays leap from the water in spring. At Cabo Pulmo, a no-take national park created in 1995 at the request of local fishing families, the weight of fish on the reef increased several times over in the following years, one of the best recorded recoveries of any marine reserve.

The totoaba and the vaquita

The totoaba is a large croaker of the upper gulf whose swim bladder is sold dried in East Asia as fish maw. Illegal gillnets set for it entangle and drown the vaquita, a tiny porpoise found only in the upper gulf, of which only around ten are thought to survive. Mexico has banned gillnets in the vaquita's range, and the totoaba is protected, but poaching continues. The totoaba has been bred in farms, and its wild numbers have shown signs of recovery.

Fish of The Sea of Cortez

Whale sharkYoung sharks feed in the Bay of La PazGiant oceanic manta raySeen around the gulf's islands

Still to be written: Totoaba, Scalloped hammerhead.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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