Bahia de Los Angeles - a UNESCO World Heritage Site

One of Baja's many moods

Very few people can name with certainty the largest fish in existence on Earth, even fewer the improbable places they congregate. Embraced on three sides by the arid, starkly beautiful Sonoran desert, flanked and studded with steep volcanic island slopes and islets rising sharply from its belly in the Gulf of California, Bahia de Los Angeles is one such place. For many months of the year, it is seasonal home to the largest fish on the planet, the Whale Shark.

In 2005, the islands and coastal regions of the upper Gulf of California, which include Bahia de Los Angeles and her islands, were designated a UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific, & Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site in recognition of the incredibly profuse and unique diversity of life. The Gulf hosts, in addition to her Whale Sharks,  thirty nine percent of the world’s species of marine mammals, a third of the world’s total species of marine cetaceans, five of the world’s eight remaining turtle species, 891 species of fish, as well as a resident population of 30,000 sea lions. The list is truly astonishing. Incredibly, it continues, too long here to enumerate.