[DAVID YETMAN] Baja, California is a skinny peninsula, 750 miles long and less than 200 miles wide.

Most of it is very dry desert.

But on its eastern flank is the Gulf of California.

Where the desert meets the sea is one of the world's most productive marine waters and an aquatic abundance unmatched anywhere.

{BIRDS SQUAWK} [ANNOUNCER] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey, The Gilford Fund, Arch and Laura Brown, and Hugh and Joyce Bell.

[DAVID YETMAN] The Gulf of California and Baja California█s East Coast meet in one of the most unusual marine environments of the world.

The separation of Baja California from the coast has created islands, and each of these islands has a different sort of habitat.

And the Gulf abounds in marine species unlike anywhere else in the world.

{UNDERWATER NOISE, MARIACHI} 5 million years ago, there was no Gulf of California.

It's a result of 750 mile long peninsula of Baja California that was once part of the Mexican mainland tearing away.

And it's connected in California to the San Andreas Fault.

The northern part of the Gulf of California is well known and particularly certain areas for it's widely varying and strong tides.

Some areas have only a few feet, but some, particularly in the very northern part, get up to 30 feet of tide, particularly around the delta of the Colorado River, where boats used to come back and forth.

{MUSIC ENDS} At the border, I have the fortune to meet a mexican colleague, my friend Professor Alberto Búrquez.

He studies deserts and shores and is as eager as I am to visit Bahia de Los Angeles, a bay on the east coast of Baja, California.

This is the famous Laguna Salada, the Salt Lake.

It's not only a spectacle itself, but proves that Baja California is moving away from the Mexican coast.

[ALBERTO BÚRQUEZ] When the Spaniards came for the first time in the 1500s, the Sea of Cortez, because Cortez was the first one to come, was teeming with life.

Whales everywhere.

Fisheries were outstanding.

{ENERGETIC GUITAR} [DAVID] We stop at San Felipe, a fishing town on the coast that is torn between conservation, exploitation and criminal action that threatens one of the Gulf's great resources.

[ALBERTO] With the closing of the Colorado River by the dams, everything is started to change very rapidly.

So the Mexican government enacted a series of measures aimed at protect the upper Gulf.

Still was difficult to enact them and to convince the people living in the area to obey these, these measures.

Well, so Felipe, a long time ago, was a quiet, sleepy town.

Town started diversifying their economy from fishing to tourism.

But then the “veda” was enacted and the ban on fishing totoaba came.

Totoaba that is this big fish that inhabits the upper reaches of the Gulf, very much coveted by the Chinese market, because they use the swimming bladder to make soup.

So poachers take advantage of that and send it illegally to China.

And that is completely the character of the region.

[DAVID] The totoaba story takes us farther south to Bahia de Los Angeles, another fishing town.

Our highway takes us through the incomparable Baja California landscapes, where volcanoes dot the countryside and strange plants appear in great numbers.

{MEXICAN GUITAR} The Gulf of California is, in the entire world, unmatched, but because in its formation, it has created a number of islands ranging from fairly large to tiny.

And those islands, most of them have been isolated for millions of years, meaning that their own life forms have developed on them.

One can find on these islands hundreds of thousands of nesting birds, lizards, that grow no other place in the world, large lizards, rattlesnakes that have no rattles and rattlesnakes that climb into trees to gather eggs.

The isolation of the peninsula and the very dry climate has encouraged the evolution of a series of organisms, particularly plants that are found nowhere else.

[ALBERTO] Deep in the Gulf of California.

The Earth is splitting, and as a consequence, we have this very high temperatures and volcanism associated to it, and that creates thermal springs.

And some of these thermal springs are up in the mountains.

Others are very close to the sea level.

And in the case of Puertecitos, there is a thermal spring that just arises very close to the beach among boulders in this convoluted landscape of Baja, California.

[DAVID] And as we climb out from the sand dunes near San Felipe, here we go south and then into the mountains.

And all of a sudden the diversity of Baja, California becomes apparent because we see this new growth of all manner of strange cacti, strange plants that are found nowhere else.

The boojum trees are so strange and wonderful that botanists throughout the world come here to central Baja California, just to see them.

Government has set up a reserve to protect the trees.

[ALBERTO] Spaniards call them “cirio.” [DAVID] Yeah, that's right.

The candles.

Yeah.

{ALBERTO] And it resembles this old European candles that were used in the Middle Ages.

[DAVID] But now people have told me they look like an inverted carrot or turnip.

And I think that's a pretty apt, however, with branches and leaves coming out-- [ALBERTO] Sort of slim carrot.

Yeah.

[DAVID] That's right.

But we saw we see one up here that's got to be at least 15 meter or 50 feet tall.

[ALBERTO] Some are even told them that.

And a lot of the most contorted forms.

{SPARROW SINGS} [DAVID] Got this great crazy looking elephant tree with all the parasites in it, but it's found only in California.

[ALBERTO] Endemic of Baja, California.

[DAVID] And if we go up here, then we see the flagship cactus in Baja California, the Great Cardón Sabueso.

[ALBERTO] Well, the other element here is are the Granites.

The dunes are the result of erosive forces as the rift under the Gulf of California is creating new rocks and is spreading.

You have the erosive forces acting, and the more you grow, the more erosion you can get.

This erosion creates sediments of which the sand is one of the most important elements.

{GUITAR ENDS} [DAVID] The many islands in the Gulf of California provide an extension of the desert habitats, but also a refuge for many, many birds and other species from predators that might live on the mainland, including human beings.

At Bahia de Los Angeles, we meet up with Mexican ecologist and bird expert Enriqueta Velarde.

She has been doing research here for four decades, including her studies with Dr. Búrquez.

She will guide us to the islets with sensational populations of birds.

It's a long trip, but we have an expert native boat pilot whose name is “Güero.” [JOSÉ MATILDE] {IN SPANISH} I've lived here a long time.

I was born and raised here in Bahía de Los Angeles.

But there have been quite a few changes here.

Fishing has changed a lot.

It has decreased quite a bit.

Right now, bird nesting has been affected by overfishing and boating in this area, but mostly from overfishing.

We have to protect and conserve the resources that we have here in Los Angeles today.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} [TRANSLATION] We have about 16 total islands and it's a protected natural area.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} [DAVID] We have just departed from the little fishing town in Bahía de Los Angeles, Los Angeles Bay, and heading for an island that's about an hour and a half away, and from there.

The excitement is we go to an island called “Isla Rasa,” where enormous populations of two species of birds nest.

It's one of the very few places where they do and 80% of the world's population of hermans gull and elegant tern are found nesting on this island.

[JOSE] {IN SPANISH} There are different species of birds on each island, for example, here in Piojo, there's a brown pelican.

In Isla Ventana, there's a blue heron, and ospreys nest and all the islands.

This is the Coronado channel.

Out here is the “Canal de Ballenas” or the Whale Channel.

And we also have the “Canal de Salsipuedes” A lot of people ask me why it█s called “Salsipuedes.” Translated, that means get out if you can.

Because if the weather gets bad, it can take forever to get there.

Normally, it only takes 30 minutes.

But one time it took us over 4 hours.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} Above all, to improve fishing, Everyone will have to respect the seasonal fishing regulations.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} [DAVID] Like much of the East Coast of Baja California, the drifting away from the mainland has created a weakness in the Earth's crust.

Parts of that rift are very, very deep and have not had time to fill up the sediments.

There are some places in the Gulf that are far greater than 10,000 feet deep, and in many places there are currents that bring that cold water to the top.

And where that water is cold, it has a lot of oxygen in it, which is a great habitat then for marine life.

{WATER WHIRRING} [ENRIQUETA VELARDE] As you can see, we are close to an island that is called “Rasito,” it's very close to the peninsula and it has a big colony of sea lions {SEA LIONS BARK} It's a breeding colony with males and females and lots of juveniles that are from last year.

They're very curious and very, very hyperactive.

And then we can also see a lot of pelicans, {BIRDS CALL} cormorants, yellow footed gulls, hermans gulls, and a new colony of elegant terns that now formed in this area, which is kind of unusual.

But during “El Niño” years it's very common to see things that you have never seen before.

{SEA LIONS SPLASH} Most of these females must be pregnant, and the young sea lions that you see are one year old.

But it's the males are very, very territorial and they form harems.

They are very good indicators of the health of the marine ecosystem because they're feeding on different types of fish.

They deep dive to get some of the species, but they also fish the very small pelagics which are surface species.

This island, it's actually called an islet, and during low tide it increases its size due to the fact that the water goes down.

But during high tide, it is much smaller.

Sea lions will occupy areas that are always above sea level, especially the harems where because the females will give birth to their pups and they need to occupy areas that are not flooded, but and also the seabirds where when they're nesting, they will also occupy areas that are never flooded.

The sea lions are also indicator species as the seabirds are.

During bad years, there's very few pups that are born.

{OCEAN SOUNDS} [DAVID] When we set off, we hoped to find Isla Rasa and all the hundreds of thousands of birds nesting there.

But the wind came up and we had to turn back.

We found refuge in this cove.

It's called “Las Animas,” the souls, a refuge from the wind.

But it also is a great place to sit and look at the nature of Baja California and the volcanic area that produced the hills all around here.

As the rift deepens, it creates great opportunities for volcanoes.

And a lot of these are right along the edge.

And the lava flows come down and over the hundreds of thousands of years, small pockets of lava are left behind as little islands.

And these islands then become themselves refuges, especially for birds and plants and otherwise might be attacked by critters from the land.

[ENRIQUETA] The sea birds are very good indicators of the environment.

And so if we study the seabirds we will have a very good idea of what is going on in the ocean and in the land with the weather.

There are some years along the decades when there is oceanographic anomaly which is usually called El Niño.

These years have a very high water temperature.

All the pelagic fish, which are the diets of these birds, are too deep under this layer.

When this happens, the birds have no food or very little food, and they're unable to accumulate many reserves to produce eggs.

All of the species that feed on the small pelagic fish are affected.

Besides the oceanographic factors, many, many boats are coming into this area and they're taking huge amounts of fish.

About 95% of those fish are turned into fishmeal.

Usually cows, chickens and pigs don't eat fish.

So now they're eating fishmeal and they're including that in their diets.

[DAVID] After a few hours, the wind gods are appeased, the sea becomes calm, and we continue on our way.

The nesting birds of Isla Rasa are a world class spectacle which host 80% of the world's population of these two marine species.

Enriqueta warns us, however, that seeing them is not a certainty.

[ENRIQUETA] The flock behavior that we are watching now is in relation to their establishment.

So they're trying to establish their nesting sites, but they are not ready to lay eggs.

Alberto Búrquez and I are coordinating a study about the relationship between vegetation and sea birds.

Some species of plants are present on some islands may determine very strongly which seabird species might nest here.

[ALBERTO] Each island has a unique set of flood species.

Each island differs from other island in their assemblage of the vegetation being in that island.

[DAVID] Rasa is a tiny island, mostly flat ideal for colonies of nesting birds.

We disembark to find none, no nests.

It's a huge disappointment.

But at least Alberto can carry out some of his ecological research.

[ALBERTO] This year the bird nesting has been very low.

So what we are interested now is in taking advantage of that to do a very fine mapping of the vegetation.

{DRONE WHIRS} We will set it to fly at about 40 meters high and we will make a series of transits along the islands.

The topography of Rasa is really interesting, it being very, very flat.

But also Rasa is one of the islands that have been most heavily disturbed by the Guano miners that came to the island and completely overturned every stone on the island.

And that changed completely the topography and the vegetation of the island.

There are two kinds of islands in the Gulf, California: islands that do not have breeding colonies of birds and islands that do have breeding colonies of birds.

The islands with breeding colonies accumulate enormous quantities of bird poo, and this is called “guano.” And the guano was widely used in the past natural fertilizer because it is rich in nitrates, in the nitrogen and phosphorus that come from the bird's diet that is mainly fish.

{UNDERWATER SOUNDS} So we are using drones to map the islands to see how is the change in vegetation and also in the topography of the islands that is related to the distribution of vegetation.

[ENRIQUETA] He found the columnar cacti growing inside the Cholla stands, a very important species in the Gulf, the Cardóns, they retain a lot of water and so forth and they shade some areas.

[ALBERTO] The other part of the story are bats.

They have been seeding all the islands of the Gulf with seeds of Cardon, and Cardon is the most common columnar cacti providing shade, providing sustenance in the form of fruits.

And these enormous colonies are the result of the giant productivity of the Gulf of California.

That is a very, very rich sea, probably along the Red Sea, the most productive sea in the world.

[DAVID] Leaving Rasa, our disappointment is soothed by encounters with marine mammals and a feeding frenzy of sensational proportions.

{ADVENTUROUS MEXICAN GUITAR} [ENRIQUETA] These dolphins that we're looking at here are feeding on some type of small pelagic fish.

And it used to be common to see these groups of dolphins 40, 30 years ago, but now they have diminished.

It█s very seldom that we see these groups now and they're associated with probably larger fish that are coming from under water.

And they are making the small pelagic fish surface.

{GUITAR, SPLASHING SOUNDS} The dolphins are feeding from the surface of the water and the seabirds are also feeding there.

So we have a different combination of marine mammals, seabirds and larger fish from under the water.

Then we just saw a humpback whale, which we hope that it surfaces again.

{DOLPHIN SPLASHES} They're helping each other to feed because of the fact that there are larger fish underwater, are chasing the smaller fish to the surface.

The dolphins are taking them from the surface layers and the seabirds her feeding also from the surface.

{SPLASHING} The dolphins are sort of surfing the water from underneath.

{WATER SPLASHING} We call them feeding frenzies, and “bochinches” here in the region.

And it's it used to be much more common in the old days.

{SPLASHING} It's very incredible.

It's it's overwhelming.

{SPLASHING, ENERGETIC GUITAR} [ALBERTO] When I was a kid, the Gulf of California was teeming with life and this, pod of dolphins, hundreds of them were just everyday life.

You could see them from the beach easily.

What we are seeing is a frenzy of feeding.

The sardines and anchovies are just going around and everyone is benefiting from the use of this resource, particularly in this year, this is a bad year, an El Niño year.

So they are all following the schools of sardines and trying to get a portion of it.

{SPLASHING, HOLLERING} [JOSE] {IN SPANISH} We've had years where we haven't seen a group of dolphins this large.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} I don't know if it's because there's plenty of food.

That would be a good sign for a group this large.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} {HAPPY GUITAR, SPLASHING} [ANGELINA MARTINEZ] {IN SPANISH} This is super exciting, something incredible, indescribable, marvelous.

It's truly a great privilege to be here in the Gulf of California in such a special scene like we are seeing now.

There are no words to describe it.

True beauty.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} {JOYFUL GUITAR, MARINE SOUNDS} [DAVID] Los Angeles Bay and other bays nearby are dotted with islands big and small.

Those islands are excellent places for fish to breed and other marine creatures.

We're lucky to have them because they produce an abundance in the Gulf of California like nowhere else in the world.

But that abundance is under attack, and it is up to us, the international community and the Mexican government, to see that that abundant resource lasts forever.

{HAPPY GUITAR} {MARIACHI MUSIC} [ANNOUNCER] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey, The Gilford Fund, Arch and Laura Brown, and Hugh and Joyce Bell.