I grew up in SW Arizona and the weather there is quite often humid and hot as a result of the desert heat meeting the damp air from the Gulf of California. In many ways the area, only 140 ft above sea level (going down to below sea level in the Imperial Valley,) is similar to the Persian Gulf - little rain, often high humidity. I was fortunate to be able to travel to the Gulf of Mexico and environs, usually as a biology student, before Mexico became the mess that it now is. Even now the Gulf is relatively safe (at least on the Baja side), but that may not last.
My first view of the Gulf came just at sundown. It had not been planned that way, but my friend and I got lost trying to take a shortcut across the Colorado River delta! I only had a short time to turn a few rocks along the shore and saw my first marine life - a porcelain crab (Petrolistes sp.). I've always liked those neat flattened crabs.
The next trip was a family one to El Golfo de Santa Clara and this was when the upper Gulf had more life, Here I found giant blue fiddler crabs (Uca princeps) that scuttled across the sand flats, and dead jellyfish on the sandy beach. Again I was fascinated by the strangeness of the Gulf habitats.
When I became a zoology major I got to travel to the Gulf more often and to spend more time examining the living things found both in the water and the nearby land. I participated in two trips south of San Filipe in Baja California Norte as an undergraduate and two more to Puerto Penasco, Sonora, as a graduate instructor for a course in invertebrate zoology. The first two trips involved a caravan of students traveling down the sandy road from San Filipe toward Puetrocitos and camping on the beach. We explored the tide pools and I also caught tiger beetles along the mud flats. Here stingrays were common, some about a meter long. We wore our sneakers to give us some protection. I found an octopus with eggs and many olive and cone shells, as well as sea hares, sea anemones, sun starfish, blue crabs, and numerous other small animals. The tides were +6, -6, meaning that the high tide was actually 12 feet above low tide. Along this shallow coast it was possible to walk a half mile out from the high tide mark. I did so once around sunset, observing the deeper tide pools at the tide's terminus and the writhing brittle stars and brightly colored sea anemones within them. However I realized that the tide would soon be turning and walked quickly back before it did.
The Gulf has changed since then. During one of the two trips a group of fishermen stopped by our camp and offered us our pick of their catch of huge Totuava, each weighing over 100 lbs (the record was somewhat over 300 lbs!) The large catches of Totuava are a thing of the past and much of the Gulf fisheries with them. The delta of the Colorado River has radically changed (and had already done so when I visited it), with not much more than a trickle ever reaching the Gulf.
Puerto Peñasco was more rocky (the name means "rocky point") than the beach in Baja California Norte, but it also had fairly vast areas of sand, especially around Cholla Bay. Again we picked favorable tides and I walked across part of Cholla Bay during a particularly low one. Here I was, with three or four of my fellow graduate students and major professor, in charge of a group of students. At Cholla Bay we had to watch out for sting rays, and indeed a tourist got stung while we were there. However we managed to avoid the stingrays, only to have one incautious student get bitten by a small, brick-red, octopus! We were worried when his arm begain to swell, but the venom was fortunately self-limiting and he recovered fully within an hour or so.
On the second trip my major professor had a surprise in store for the students - a lecture at the University of Sonora- University of Arizona Research station by Sir C. M. Younge, well known among biologists for his work on mollusks, who was escorted by none other than Joel Hedgpeth, a major contributor to later editions of Ricketts and Calvin's book, "Between Pacific Tides." Ed Ricketts was of course a friend of John Steinbeck, his co-author of "The Sea of Cortez," and the prototype for Doc in "Cannery Row." As a further treat the two professors walked into the tide with us while we turned rocks looking for invertebrates. One of the great perks of being a science student is the chance to meet and sometimes interact with the greats in your field.
Finally I traveled as far south as La Paz in Baja California Sur and Topolobampo, Sinaloa, as part of a class in advanced invertebrate zoology in the early 1970s. The trip was wonderful in that I saw a lot of the Baja peninsula south of Santa Rosalia, where our ferry took us from Guaymas. More about this after the fold!
Norse Beach at Puerto Peñasco looking north.
Rocks at Puerto Peñasco.
Giant Fiddler Crab (Uca princeps) on mudflats, El Golfo de Santa Clara.
Stranded Cannonball Jellyfish (Stomolophus sp.) at El Golfo de Santa Clara.
Volcano Barnacles (Tetraclita sp.) and remains of Oysters (Ostrea sp.) at Puerto Peñasco.
Dead fish and snails at Cholla Bay (Bahia Cholla), Puerto Peñasco.
A Red Octopus (possibly Octopus fitchi), that bit a student who picked it up at Cholla Bay.
Large-holed Sand Dollar (Encope grandis) at Cholla Bay.
Sea Anemone (possibly Bunodosoma sp.) at Cholla Bay.
My major professor, several other graduate students and a visitor from Belgium left from Tucson and traveled down to Nogalas, where we crossed the border, got our visas and headed south across the plains of Sonora to Hermosilio, the capitol. We made Guaymas and camped at a tailer park on Bacochibampo Bay. The pelicans were numerous and very tame. When I woke up in the morning an Osprey was perched above my cot!
We unloaded our vehicles in Santa Rosalia from the ferry Presidente Díaz Ordaz a bit late (the crew missed the dock and the ship had to be winched back to the pier, much to my major professor's irritation - he was a U. S. Navy Captain in World War II), camped at Mulegé and next morning drove into the Sierra south of the town. I had always thought these mountains to be a continuation of the Sierra de la Giganta, but the books say that this range starts west of Loreto - the range seems generally to be unlabeled on maps! We camped there for several nights while we explored the rock slides for land snails (my major professor's speciality). We then broke camp and drove south along Bahia Concepción to Loreto, turning inland through the Sierra de la Giganta to San Javier. We camped along the road to the old mission village, stopping at the mission to explore the lava rocks above the canyon. Finally we met the paved highway again on the Magdalena Plain and stopped overnight in La Paz, to take the ferry to Topolobampo, Sinaloa. Then back up to Guaymas in a driving rain and return to Tucson the next day. Only one of us got sick on the whole trip and my major professor published a review of the Baja California land snails from this and other trips to the peninsula.
Sunset at La Paz Harbor.
As usual all photos, such as they are (I was not using modern cameras and in reality not even a 35 mm! These were box camera shots!) are by me. It was in 1960s-1970s and I was dirt poor. I did not get a 35 mm until I took a course in scientific illustration at the University of Arizona, about the time I went on the trip to La Paz, and I rather stupidly thought it too precious to take with me across the border.