L.A. Bay Has Another Side to Show After Tragedy

It was the worst kind of wind, howling out of the desert and raging over the sea, prohibiting the nine scientists from making any noticeable progress toward shore and ultimately flipping their vessel, pitching them into a frantic fight for their lives.

Five of them lost that fight. The four others wound up cold and frightened but otherwise OK, huddled on the shore of a small island they had managed to swim to, awaiting rescue.

And, suddenly, the remote little Baja California town of Bahia de los Angeles, 370 miles south of the border on the Sea of Cortez, was on the map.

“We don’t want to be blamed for what happened,” says Abraham Vazquez, a physician assigned by the Mexican government to the area 15 years ago. “Nor do we want to be known for this kind of thing.”

It was a tragedy, to be sure. Five lives were lost. Among those killed was noted researcher Gary A. Polis, 53, a UC Davis professor leading an expedition studying scorpions and spiders on the islands on the fringe of the sprawling bay.

Mainstream media north of the border, especially in the Bay Area, gave the story prominent play.

Journalists profiled the scientists, some from the U.S. and some from Japan, and pieced together as best they could the desperate hours after the 22-foot boat capsized. All nine researchers tried in vain to cling to the overturned vessel while being swamped by heavy seas.

As part of their coverage, reporters basically described L.A. Bay, as the town is commonly called, as a sleepy fishing village far off the beaten path, blasted all too often by devil winds that whip up without warning and strike fear into the hearts of mariners.

Nearly two weeks after the March 27 catastrophe, families and friends of the victims are still mourning. Four bodies have been recovered. A researcher from Japan remains missing and presumed dead.

Townspeople such as Vazquez, who also owns a small sportfishing business, are trying to downplay the disaster factor.

“None of our captains have lost anyone for as long as I’ve been here,” he says.

And veteran Baja travelers who frequent L.A. Bay are telling anyone who wants to know that the mainstream media, while obviously concentrating on the tragedy, failed to capture the essence of a seaside hamlet so many have come to love over the years.

“For anyone with any appreciation of the natural world, L.A. Bay is a virtual playground,” says Lynn Mitchell, editor of a newsletter published by Discover Baja, a San Diego-based travel club with more than 7,000 members. “You never know what to expect.”

This year, for example, about 20 juvenile gray whales traveled well beyond their southernmost migration route to the lagoons on Baja California’s western shore, rounding the peninsula and continuing hundreds of miles up the eastern shore to L.A. Bay, where they frolicked and fed for weeks before heading back to the Pacific. Scientists remain especially interested in this unusual occurrence.

Large and docile whale sharks typically arrive in the bay in June and stay into September, providing incredible thrills for snorkelers who swim alongside them. Mitchell’s husband once watched in awe as one of these gentle giants was torn apart by two orcas, or killer whales. He caught the event on videotape.

It was the stunning view of the bay from a mountain above town that inspired San Diego’s Graham Mackintosh to walk 3,000 miles of Baja’s shoreline and write a book about his journey.

“Falling in love with the bay [during my first visit] led to my falling in love with all of Baja,” Mackintosh says. “Your first look is this terrific panorama of the beautiful, blue sea and dozens of these barren, desert islands. It’s just magnificent.”

Mackintosh’s book, “Into a Desert Place” (W.W. Norton and Co., $14), offers both an entertaining and enlightening perspective of the land and its inhabitants, human and otherwise.

For sportfishermen, the L.A. Bay experience can be downright magical.

In this “Midriff” section of the gulf, nutrient-rich water from the north mixes with warmer currents from the south. The subsequent upwelling brings the nutrients to the surface, attracting baitfish, which in turn attract thousands of birds, mammals, and an array of larger game fish.

The late Ray Cannon referred to these events as “fish pileups,” and the legendary Baja chronicler described them with inimitable flare.

“They are triggered when long schools of yellowtail, mixed with armies of bonito and skipjack, collide with an even greater number of sardines, herring and other small fishes abounding in the cooler Midriff waters,” Cannon wrote in his 1966 Sunset Publications book, “The Sea of Cortez.”

“As the game fish cross the convergent line of warm and cold waters, the smaller fishes take to the air in such numbers that they form what seems to be a solid silver blanket two to three feet above the surface.

“It is then that every fish-eating creature of the Sea dashes into the fray and runs amok, chomping and disemboweling each other in a ferocious frenzy. As a result of this devastating interruption in the well-ordered process of evolution, the normally calm, limpid face of the Sea is churned in convulsions of mass slaughter.

” . . . When the pelicans, boobies, gulls, terns and frigates zero in, peel off and dive for a share, their excited screams summon clouds of other sea fowl from the distant islands. The bellows of sea lions are relayed from rookery to rookery, until long lines of these creatures come barreling in from all points. Some such signal even seems to be broadcast through the water itself, for pods of porpoise and bottlenose dolphin vault in toward the pileup.

“Great sharks join the slaughter, tearing and slashing at everything in sight. Huge manta rays, gigantic jewfish and black sea bass, with mouths large enough to gulp in a beer keg, come up from their 50-fathom caves. All carnivores become as if insane, and they gorge, disgorge and gorge again.”

Of course, there are the winds.

The westerlies develop in the desert and blow across the beach toward the Mexican mainland. Locals know they’re coming when flat, stationary clouds of dust develop above the higher peaks on the peninsula.

The fierce northerlies, especially common during the spring, also create problems. They, too, can sometimes be detected before they arrive, in the form of a white, bumpy line on the horizon.

A westerly, with gusts to 60 mph, is what walloped the scientists as they were trying to return from Isla Cabeza de Caballo, or Horse Head Island, only five miles from shore.

While an investigation involving the U.S. Coast Guard is in progress, it remains unclear whether the fiberglass-hulled vessel, an unconventional craft believed to have been built in South America, was overloaded, although the capsizing after the engine stalled indicates a problem with stability.

Nor is it clear how many were wearing life vests. Coast Guard Lt. Benjamin Benson, who is in charge of the investigation, said none of the survivors was wearing one, but a few managed to grab and cling to floating seat cushions.

“Everyone put on ponchos before leaving [the island for shore] because of the wind and all the mist,” Benson says, so the survivors did not know for sure who was or wasn’t wearing one.

Vazquez, a longtime acquaintance of Polis, said nine people were far too many for so small a boat, especially on a morning greeted by a brisk wind to begin with. “Everyone knew it’d be very rough that day,” he says.

Although the local skippers boast an exceptional safety record, according to Vazquez, the winds do claim victims from time to time.

Just last year, a young boy was swept to sea aboard his kayak. His body was never recovered.

Mitchell, who has a home at L.A. Bay, once was forced to wait out the wind at a makeshift camp for two days at San Francisquito, a small point just south of L.A. Bay. She and a few others got caught in a wind storm accompanied by rain, thunder and lightning.

“The really hard thing about this particular area is that when it’s calm, the sea looks like glass and it can fool you into thinking there is no way the wind can come up,” she says.

I’ve only been to L.A. Bay once, as part of a caravan of fishermen. We set up camp on a beach north of town, across from Smith Island. My two brothers and I were going to share a large tent, but it turned out to be too small for the three of us, so I volunteered to sleep under the stars on a lounge chair.

Thinking about scorpions and spiders while others were snug in their tents made it difficult to sleep, especially because it was impossible to keep my arms from dangling onto the sand. I was envious of those in their tents--until a big westerly came roaring out of the desert. It felt like a giant blast furnace as the 50-mph gusts brought in 90-degree air.

One by one the tents were uprooted and blown toward the water. I watched with amusement as men and women, in various states of dress, went chasing after them.

That was seven years ago, but I’m told not much has changed in and around town. It remains a close-knit community of about 1,000 permanent residents and nearly half that number of retirees from the States who have built homes there.

There are only four phones in town, very few TVs and few amenities at any of the small motels or trailer parks.

That, apparently, is part of the town’s charm.

Says Mitchell, “We always joke about how bad the road [into town] is, about the lack of water at times, that it’s too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. But those are the same reasons why there is no big Hilton there, and the reason L.A. Bay remains so pristine and beautiful.”

FISH REPORT, Page 13