Saving Cabo Pulmo. Again.

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This is a story about environmental heroism and conservation success. Plus, there's pictures of jumping devil rays. Can't beat that. 

Aerial view of devil rays in Cabo Pulmo. Photos by Octavio Aburto-Oropeza/iLCS

There's nowhere quite like Cabo Pulmo. Measuring just 14 km by 5 km, this small patch of coast in the Gulf of California has been dubbed 'the 'most successful marine reserve in the world.' Established in 1995 largely at the behest of the 100 or so residents of a nearby village, it nearly became a victim of its own success, until the villagers once again interceded on its behalf.

For the first ten years of its existence, the reserve's existence made no measurable impact on the wildlife within its boundaries; after a decade or so, however, that all changed. Overall fish biomass in the reserve increased by 400 percent. Check out, for example, the aerial photograph above of devil rays. "You can't even really see from this photograph, but the rays are four or five deep in places," Grant Galland of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, co-author of a paper about the reserve, told me last year. "You couldn't possibly get an accurate count from underwater."

The rays are four or five deep in places.

Exactly why Cabo Pulmo has been so successful is not entirely clear. However, two factors of success, are quite clear. It was established, and is enforced, by local residents; and the few commercial activities that are permitted - tourism, fishing on the reserve's fringes - are small-scale. However, the lure of potential pesos soon proved too much for the commercial tourism industry, and specifically the Spanish company Hansa Urbana, which sought to built a mega-resort called 'Cabo Cortes.' The resort would have comprised a 3,655-room hotel, two golf courses, a marina, shopping centers, and a private airport, and would have consumed water equivalent to that used by 183,000 people daily for 30 years. 

Cabo Pulmo: Where conservation and quality of life aren't mutually exclusive

The establishment of the reserve was not without its difficulties, notes Octavio Aburto-Oropeza, who took these photographs: "The people from Cabo Pulmo suffered. It was not easy. The transition to other employment sources, other than fisheries, the economic crisis, and the new regulations as part of the identity as a Marine Park represented great challenges, with high costs." However, they persevered, to the extent that they "now have a quality of life superior to that of any other artisanal fishing community in the Gulf of Mexico." So much so, in fact, that they, in concert with a variety of environmental NGOs, took the lead in actively opposing the development of Cabo Cortes, choosing long-term investment in their natural surroundings over the lure of potential short-term profit. That opposition proved successful when, earlier this month, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced his government would not permit the building of the resort, determining that Cabo Pulmo is Mexico's most important reef and in need of full protection.

Tweeted Enric Sala of the National Geographic Society: "Despite popular pressure and president's decision, the real hero of this story is the local community."

Want more? View an annotated slideshow of Octavio Aburto-Oropeza's Cabo Pulmo images at Discovery Channel News.