El Pardito Island

By Audrey Bennett - Lokahi Ocean Science

Juan Pablo Cuevas, within minutes of meeting us, took us from one church to the other: the ocean where he had fished for 70 years, and the cool stone structure where the community would gather every week. Rather than images of Christ, the walls were adorned with whale bones, feathers, and pictures of the women of Pardito, beaming, holding babies. He looked at a photo of his son half the height of a fishing pole. “Y ahora tiene una panza así,” he said, laughing. "Que rápida es la vida.” 

The rest of the church also reflected time passing. Above the meeting space was a small wooden sailboat, the first fishing vessel of Pardito. Now Juan had a fiberglass panga with a small outboard, kept in impeccable condition. Hanging in the church was a ring of large, rusting fishing hooks for catching sharks, another relic. “Para recordarnos,” he explained. 

We will be collaborating with the Cuevas family in the coming months in the hopes of identifying hammerhead shark nurseries in the Bay of La Paz. The fishers are essential in this mission; they are our primary source of current information, and they can captain pangas, deploy longlines, and land sharks better than anyone. Perhaps on the surface people see the motives of conservation research and fishing as contradictory, but this project has already showed me the contrary. For both the scientists and the fishers, the ocean is our church, our way of life. When I look at those fishing hooks that are now just rusting, and those babies that are now men, men who are working to protect the sharks, I feel like a deep current is shifting beneath me.

Images: Courtesy of Lokahi Ocean Science.

Blog publication date: May 12, 2023