Pelicans remind me of the Maribou storks of Africa, only a little more attractive. They do hang with the seagulls a lot, so you have to think of them more as scavengers than fishers. Makes sense to have a big bucket if you’re going to be a garbage man. Seagulls are like the magpies that used to bug us with their racket in Montana, only a lot louder. There must be some reason evolutionary they need to squawk so much. Diana is convinced that they are laughing at us. Anytime we move, they break out in a chorus of gaffaws. It could be that they’re just that emotionally high strung, or like people, that they just have too much to say. Scavengers get a bad name. Not really fair. They have to be alert all the time. They cannot afford to miss a trick.
Purpose doesn’t imply meaning. We must all, ruthlessly, advance our DNA. That’s the DNA talking. Altruism is self-interest of a species, even when you extend it to the environment. We can live in a world without whales (though who would want to), but ultimately not in a world that is busy ridding itself of a treasure trove of beautiful animals.
Puerto Refugio March 11-13, 2016
The sun just rose at the tip of the point that marks one side of the channel to the west bay. We can see it because the breeze which was utterly calm last night has swung around WSW so that we are over our anchor. The range of the spring tide when we dropped the hook was -.9M to 2.5M high, so 3.4 meters. The fishermen who slept on the beach, the gravel beach, got busy at first light (as fishermen do), and already they have left for Bahia de Los Angeles – the small town which only just got electricity a couple years ago, forty miles or so along the arid, uninhabited shore to the south of us.
Yesterday they set up in the cove that is our home these past three or four days at the entrance to a small lagoon, and with long air hoses and a compressor they dove for scallops. They worked hard, all day. It was relatively and they were, as always, completely covered – sweatshirts with hoods, down to white fishing boots. One of the crew of five sported brightly colored plaid pants. The divers here have an arduous and dangerous occupation. Here they were working very shallow, but at Salsipuedes they were diving over 20 meters deep. For hours. Its hard to imagine how they don’t kill themselves. It’s also hard to imagine that there are any rescue teams ready to evacuate them to decompression chambers hundreds of miles away on the mainland, if (when) they do get in trouble.
Diana spoke to them in her virtually nonexistent Spanish (still better than mine), and we waited for them to come buy to sell us some scallops. ‘Ajillo’ (chopped garlic) is what they kept saying, though ‘vieiras’ is the official word, we looked up later. Eventually, we realized that they weren’t taking breaks in their scallop diving, so Diana kayaked over to the beach at sunset when they finally called it a day, prepared to negotiate a good deal for ‘vieiras’ direct from the source (or at least only one step removed, since we have a diving hookah and will get them ourselves once we learn the technique of knifing them off the rocks and figuring out where to look). They had a fire going and were making their dinner when she arrived. She was able to get an idea from them what the market price would be (kinda what she guessed) but they wouldn’t sell them to her. Nope. They insisted on giving them to her free, a huge bag of them (at least 50 giant scallops). So much for her negotiating skills. And, when she somehow managed to communicate that her husband (she probably tried the Italian word “merito” or “espouse”) liked chili peppers, like the ones they were frying with their fish for dinner, they gave her a ‘to go’ plate of fried fish and peppers. At the grey whale camp in San Ignacio they would have called it sea bass. She managed to make them take a few pesos and she had already given them a bag of rice crackers. She came back to the boat with the yummy fish and peppers (which went nicely with the end of my beer) and then decided that the generosity was decidedly too one-sided. She cut up a loaf of banana bread she’d baked that afternoon and brought it over to the boys, like a nice Mexican mama, hoping that something different from what they must eat every day, would be a treat. This time she got a picture. They lined up for their portrait when she pulled out the iphone.
Who knows what the rest of our journey will hold, but right now we aren’t far at all (as the crow or jet flies) from the big, sophisticated cities of California and the US where no one would ever consider giving away a five pound bag of beautiful scallops they’d just worked like coal miners to get. Especially not to some apparently wealthy foreigners in a brand new yacht anchored in their spot who was asking to buy them. They had a different idea altogether from their not so distant neighbors on the other side of Donald Trump’s would-be spectacular Great Wall. They have fished here, no doubt for generations. Living as hard and simple a life as you would expect to find. They keep a small shrine on top of the rock, painted, gaudy, fire-engine red, and used some of the left over paint to write their names on the dark rocks. They seemed pretty content in this place where even I can go catch a few one-taco cabrilla on demand. Fried with a some spicy peppers and a little sip of Tequilla. Not too shabby. 
