By Gene Kira

Unlike some of Baja California's other towns--such as Loreto, which was established by Spanish missionaries over 300 years ago--San Felipe's history is relatively short.

A commercial catch of enormous totuava at Bahia San Luis Gonzaga. From left to right, Tony Reyes, Gorgonio Fernandez, and his son, Chi Chi Fernandez, c. 1954. --Reprinted with permission from The Unforgettable Sea Of Cortez. Click photo for enlargement

As you stand on the wide, sandy beaches of today's bustling downtown, it's hard to visualize what the place looked like as recently as 1950, when it was just a sleepy fishing village of perhaps three-hundred people. In that year, the highway from Mexicali was graded and paved, in hopes of touching off a real estate boom that would not actually materialize for another half century, and the town of San Felipe was just a seasonal fish camp for a fleet of shrimp boats and a very small group of fisherman who plied the local waters in canoes and skiffs.

(Today, you can still see the remnants of the original ice plant on the low bluff at the north end of town, where ice was made and sent sliding down a long chute to the shrimp boats as they anchored at the base of the cliff.)

And, as you look out over the calm waters of San Felipe today, it's hard to imagine that as recently as the 1950s these beautiful beaches were the scene of one of the most dramatic lessons mankind has ever learned about how fragile the life of the sea really is.

The story began just after the turn of the century in the town of Guaymas, some 400 miles south on the far side of the Sea of Cortez. There, it was discovered that the internal air bladder of a gigantic fish called the "totuava" could be dried and shipped at a good profit to China, where it could serve as a substitute for a local product in a soup called Seen Kow.

The totuava, Cynoscion macdonaldi, is the largest member of the croaker or sea trout family. It grows to well over 200 pounds in weight and it looks something like a salmon on massive doses of steroids; when fully grown, it is literally as big as a marlin.

Modern San Felipe. Giant totuava were once caught from the beach here with handlines. --Copyright © 2000 by Gene Kira. Click photo for enlargement

Despite their size, totuava swam close to shore in enormous schools and they were easily caught. Overnight, a lively trade sprang up around Guaymas, and by about 1920, the local supply was becoming depleted.

About that time, it was discovered that Guaymas was actually located at the extreme south end of the totuava's natural range; the local fishermen realized that they had only been tapping the edges of the supply. The main mass of the totuava population was actually centered 400 miles to the north, in the waters around San Felipe. Here, the anadromous fish migrated each spring into the mouth of the Colorado River to spawn, just like salmon.

As the totuava supply around Guaymas dwindled, some fishermen began to make the arduous trip north to begin fishing at San Felipe, and it was during the 1920s that the town was actually established as such. I once met an old fisherman who, as a boy in 1928, had walked from Guaymas, nearly 500 miles around the blistering hot north shore of the gulf, with his mother and brothers and sisters, while his father paddled their dugout canoe alongside. They made camp in what is now downtown San Felipe, and they fished for totuava by throwing baited handlines from the beach.

Downtown San Felipe, c. 1951. Note shrimp boat fleet, ice plant on low bluff at upper right. --Reprinted with permission from The Unforgettable Sea Of Cortez. Click photo for enlargement

The fish were easy-to-catch and they were huge, with a few even thought to have exceeded 300 pounds in weight. They swam right to the beach in schools so thick they could be harpooned with one's eyes held closed. Although their flesh was delicious and almost indistinguishable from that of their close relative, the white seabass, most of the totuava were simply left to rot on the beach after their air bladders were cut out. This remained true, even after some Americans began exporting the fish to the United States in the early 1920s, using ice trucks specially equipped to make the 125-mile open desert crossing to Mexicali.

In those days, though, traditional fishermen using harpoons and baited handlines could do little real damage to the numerous schools that swam past San Felipe and the other small settlements of the extreme northern gulf; they could only catch a tiny, insignificant percentage of the total population. It was in 1935 that the first real damage was done when the Colorado River was impounded behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border. That cut off the annual spring flood of brackish water that was the totuava's natural spawning medium, and an inevitable cycle of decline was begun.

By about 1940, fishermen could no longer handline totuava from shore, but were forced to travel farther and farther in search of fish. By 1942, the commercial catch of totuava meat had also increased to the point that 4.2 million pounds of fish were exported to the United States. Still, the totuava population resisted the pressure, and stocks remained stable until the mid-1950s when the real collapse began with the introduction of gill nets and dynamite. Until that time, the pre-spawn fish swimming into the mouth of the Colorado River could not be caught with the fishermen's baited hooks, because they refused to feed until after they had broadcast their eggs and milt. Once gill nets and dynamite allowed the interception of the fish before they had a chance to spawn, the die was inevitably cast against the totuava.

Ironically, during this same period--between about 1955 and 1965--a very promising sport fishing industry was just getting off to an abortive start in San Felipe. This was a period of rapid expansion in U.S. interest in camping and sport fishing, and when word of the huge totuava got out, tourists began flocking south to catch them. But the local sport fishing business was nipped in the bud during the mid-1960s when the totuava suddenly disappeared almost overnight.

Tony Reyes with five totuava near or over 200 pounds in weight, San Felipe, c. 1953. Reyes today operates the sport fishing panga mothership, Jose Andres, with his son, Tony Jr. --Reprinted with permission from The Unforgettable Sea Of Cortez. Click photo for enlargement

American sport fishing columnist, Ray Cannon, wrote in 1965: "As a great commercial game fish, the giant, up to 300-pound totuava seems close to losing its popularity, if not its very existence.

"The once enormous migrating schools have now been reduced to a scattered few, which because of their peculiar spawning habit, may now be too depleted to reproduce a sustaining number.

"This great croaker which once drew as many as 10,000 people for an Easter weekend to San Felipe, will cease to attract any visiting anglers unless drastic action is taken to halt gill netting..."

And what ever happened to the totuava?

This magnificent fish, greatly reduced in size and numbers, still swims in the waters of the northern Sea Of Cortez, and today it enjoys the protection of a federal ban on both commercial and sport fishing. In recent years, it seems to be making something of a modest comeback, with some specimens over 30 pounds being caught by illegal poachers.

But those incredible schools of huge, marlin-sized croakers are just a memory. On the beautiful tourist beaches of today's San Felipe, very few people are aware of the phenomenal fishery that existed there only a short time ago.http://www.BajaDestinations.com

Author, Gene Kira, lower left, with Hotel Los Arcos skipper, Vicente Garcia, off Isla Cerralvo, near La Paz. --Copyright © 2000 by Gene Kira.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
San Diego-based writer/lecturer, Gene Kira, has been visiting Baja California for over 35 years. He is the author of three books related to sport fishing on the Mexican peninsula: THE BAJA CATCH, a fishing guidebook for all of Baja's 2,000-mile coastline; KING OF THE MOON, an award-winning literary novel set in a small Baja fish camp of the 1960s; and the THE UNFORGETTABLE SEA OF CORTEZ, a history of Baja's sport fishing "Golden Age" from 1947 to 1977, and a biography of legendary Baja outdoor writer, Ray Cannon. Gene's website, www.bajadestinations.com, contains more on his books and lectures, as well as up-to-date information on current sport fishing conditions in Baja California.

Front cover, The Baja Catch, by Gene Kira and Neil Kelly.

Front cover, The Unforgettable Sea Of Cortez, by Gene Kira.

Front cover, King Of The Moon, by Gene Kira

Copyright © 2000 by Gene Kira.