(Photo: beach at CEDO, at low tide)

As pointed out to me before my arrival, Puerto Peñasco, Mexico is a place of extremes. The sun is relentless and evasive, from which there is little relief; the desert is vast and revealing; there is an honesty inherent in the way humans exist there, openly, in shanty towns or small houses, with open doors and familial skeletons seemingly in the yards. And this is the place I needed recently, and periodically, as such a landscape, culturally and physically, provide a nearly instantaneous shift in perspective, in priorities, in direction.

(Photo: tide pools at morning low tide, outside of CEDO)

Puerto Peñasco is in the driest part of Sonora, Mexico with less than two inches of rain per year, on the shore of the gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortés). I went with a group of marine biology students and a few designers from the University of Arizona to gather materials necessary to create something that will bridge the gap between science and art. We want to make science, whatever that might be, visual and accessible to as many humans as possible. In this case, we followed the biologists around as they explored the sea creatures living in the tide pools at low tide both in the night and day. Some of these creatures are even endemic, meaning they exist only in this part of the world.

(Photo: fire worms at Station Beach, low tide in the morning)

Although Puerto Peñasco has been gravely overfished and is in danger of lifelessness, the tide pools did reveal a vast array of creatures. We saw anemones, heliasters, octopi, sea cucumbers, chiton, tunicates, fire worms, brittle stars, swimming clams, crabs of all sorts (my favorite being the weird and fiercely competitive hermits), sea urchins and lots of other things.

(Photo: sea cucumber at CEDO during night tide-pooling)

The designers also took a few hours off to explore Estero Meruda, a nearby estuary where oystercatchers have set up a small, sustainable business and where many other, totally fascinating critters live. There, we saw fiddler crabs, including enormous and unusual red ones, a huge snail, oysters of course, and many kinds of birds like the magnificent frigatebird, terns, wimbrels, curlews and more. We also ate ceviche from El Barco, the restaurant there, which is a dish served on a large tortilla chip with crumbled fish cooked in lime, fresh tomatoes and celery and maybe onions too.

(Photo: Estero Meruda just before high tide in the morning)

This estuary is also in danger of depletion and destruction by developers wanting to build high-rises on the land. There is no fresh water nearby or much other development at all, so the resources necessary to support such structures and life would be astronomical and devastating to the region. It’s stupid, really.

(Photo: unusually large red fiddler crab at Estero Meruda)

Anyway, the weekend was filled with these kinds of explorations and lookings, with intermittent swimming, writing and watching. We slept outside at night, watching the stars with binoculars, gasping at the shooting ones, dozing.

(Photo: group of marine biologists at CEDO, before departing for the States)

Before leaving, I’d decided that this weekend would be a symbolic turning point in the semester, after which I would be relaxed and calm, less anxious and scattered. The ocean, I figured, would certainly act as it does in literature, as a metaphor. I think it did (for a time anyway) and either way, I got to see super sweet and totally unusual animals, as they are, as they live.

(Photo: sunset at Puerto Peñasco, at CEDO)