When Francisco “Pancho” Mayoral’s father Pachico reached out a shaking hand on one breezy February afternoon back in 1972—coincidentally, the very month Pancho was born—and dared to make contact with one of the largest wild creatures on the planet, he had no idea that he would be opening a door. His fishing skiff was surrounded by whales in San Ignacio Lagoon for over an hour. One of the whales would not stop rubbing itself against the bow of his boat, so Pancho’s frightened father finally decided to take matters quite literally into his own hands.
When he reached out to touch that first gray whale’s head—the first known contact of its kind between human and whale—Pachico Mayoral not only opened a portal between two species that had previously been hunter and hunted, he also cracked open a door of opportunity. It was a door that his son Pancho would eventually help to kick entirely off its hinges as he worked to change the face of the local kayak industry in Baja.San Ignacio Lagoon, the site of the world’s only “undeveloped” birthing ground of the East Pacific gray whale, once faced a serious ecological threat. There had been a plan to build a giant saltworks in this lonely site. Its operation would have disrupted the natural workings of the lagoon and could have destroyed it as a birthing ground. Pachico was instrumental in creating the eco-friendly tourist industry that led to the preservation of the lagoon.Before that day—the day of the miracle, as some call it—grays were still known locally not as the “friendly whales” of today, but as “devilfish,” a relic moniker of the whaling days, earned for their unparalleled ferocity when fighting back against the harpoon. And until that day, a child from a remote fishing village such as the one at San Ignacio Lagoon where Pancho grew up had two choices in life: Fish or flee. Accept the increasingly difficult fishing life, or leave home to find work elsewhere. Not that “seasonal whale-watching guide” is any sort of economic panacea, but in a land of so few options, just about any legal occupation is welcome, and it beats poaching endangered species or running drugs—both ever-present temptations for a hungry fisherman struggling to feed his family during a slow season.After his father fell ill when Pancho was 14, he left school to fish and help support his family. Even after his dad recovered a few months later, he decided to continue fishing. “I guess you could say I was hooked,” he deadpanned. His slightly pursed lips concealing that increasingly familiar hint of a smile was my only indication that his bilingual pun was indeed intentional. “It was hard work, but I was only 14 and making my own money.”So he continued fishing for the next several years and eventually bought his own skiff, Suzy Q (after the song by one of his favorite bands, Creedence Clearwater Revival). It was a tough way to earn a living. Always hard work, he explained. “Some days, no matter how hard you worked, you still came home, you know, empty handed.” Sensing that I hadn’t appreciated the full impact of his statement, and apparently deciding he was ready to take me further into his confidence, he elaborated. “‘Empty handed,’” he spelled out, “means you go to bed hungry—” and then, after a slight pause added quietly, “again.” The way he said it, matter-of-factly with no trace of self pity, made me certain that he was no stranger to missed meals. That, apparently, was how he got started poaching.“At first you do it out of necessity, during a slow time of year or after a streak of bad luck…” he trailed off, letting me connect the dots. “Later it becomes like a vice, and you start doing it even when you don’t really need to because the money is better.” He laughed at my naïveté when I said it must be difficult to sell an illegal catch. Whether simply something like lobster out of season or an endangered species, he explained with a mix of regret and sadness, “There’s always a buyer.” This all changed abruptly one autumn some nine years ago when a volunteer from RARE (a non-profit environmental conservation group) came to the lagoon. I’d noticed Pancho’s T-shirt a few days earlier: “Keeping what’s rare, there,” it said simply. Begun in Costa Rica to protect local bird species, the organization had spread to southern Baja. “They actually offered to pay us for three months to learn English.” As his English improved, the lessons turned to natural history, ostensibly to make the fishers more employable as eco-tourism guides. That led inevitably to education about ecosystems and reasons not to fish out of season, in order to allow stocks to recover so that they could be fished sustainably.“It all started to click,” he explained. The training provided him and other local youths with good reasons not to poach, as well as ways to earn a living. That spring, instead of returning to fishing, he sought work with a local kayak company on the Sea of Cortez. Within a year he’d learned to paddle well enough to become a lead guide. Although guiding, like fishing, is seasonal, the going rate is around $50 to $100 a day—not bad for an area where minimum wage earned by many is closer to $50 per week. Over the next several years, he worked as a kayak instructor for a U.S.-based outdoor school and got further training as an environmental educator—including becoming a trainer for Leave No Trace, an international organization promoting responsible outdoor recreation. He began teaching others, from his clients to his peers, ways to minimize their impact on this fragile desert-sea ecosystem.Pancho also became a RARE volunteer, helping to teach the same course he’d once taken. He hoped he could be a mentor for others in his community. “I looked at them and saw myself two years earlier, working harder every year to catch fewer fish, and feeling like I had no options.”He now has his own tour company and is among a vanguard of Baja locals claiming their place in a kayaking industry once dominated almost entirely by guides and owners from north of the U.S. and Canadian borders. Rather than detracting from his role as an environmental educator, his past experiences as a poacher only seem to lend him credibility among his peers, and his success offers a model: It is possible to earn a living from the sea in a way that does not threaten to destroy it.