Bahía Kino is a town in the Mexican state of Sonora

Sonora

Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....

, on the Sea of Cortez Gulf of California

Gulf of California

The Gulf of California is a body of water that separates the Baja California Peninsula from the Mexican mainland...

; it was named after Eusebio Kino

Eusebio Kino

Eusebio Francisco Kino S.J. was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who became famous in what is now northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States in the region then known as the Pimaria Alta...

. The name also applies to the adjacent bay between Tiburón Island

Tiburón Island

Tiburón Island is both the largest island in the Gulf of California and the largest island in Mexico, with an area of . It was made a nature reserve in 1963 by President Adolfo López Mateos. Tiburón is Spanish for shark. The etymology of the Seri name is unknown...

 and Punta San Nicolás, Sonora

Sonora

Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....

. The names Bahía de Kino, Bahía Kino and Kino Bay are used interchangeably.

History

The first documentation of the historic residents of the Bahia de Kino region were probably in the form of notes taken by Padre Eusebio Kino during his travels to the region in 1685 when he visited the bay and named it Bahia San Juan Bautista (Doode 1999). The local indigenous population was widely dispersed in small hunter-gatherer groups ranging from the Guaymas area as far north as present day Puerto Libertad. They called themselves Comcaac (Seri) . The harsh environment of the coastal region dictated that the Comcaac live with a high degree of flexibility and resourcefulness, a characteristic that allowed them to remain free of contact with, and exploitation by, the Spaniards.

Although later Spanish expeditions to the region undertook to develop contacts with the various Comcaac groups, it is apparent from the record that the Comcaac remained autonomous and were never formally conquered (Griffen 1959). It was not until they formed economic bonds out of necessity – probably the need to purchase gasoline for outboard motors used on their small wooden boats during the late 1950s – that they started down the path of social and economic integration into wider Mexican culture (Felger & Moser 1991, Weaver et al. 2003). Wandering groups of Comcaac routinely passed through the Kino area, using cave shelters in the vicinity though there is scant evidence of any permanent presence in the immediate area.

The first Mestizo

Mestizo

Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...

 settlers to settle in the Bahia de Kino area arrived in the early 1920s to establish a small fish camp near the site of the present day town. Fishing activity centered on the Totoaba

Totoaba

The totoaba or totuava is a marine fish of the drum family that is indigenous to the northern half of the Gulf of California in Mexico...

 (Totoaba macdonaldi) a species much sought after and reported as abundant around nearby Isla Alcatraz (Chute, 1928, Bahre 2000, Doode 1999).

In 1922, Yates Holmes, an American secured a federal concession for almost 6000 acres (24.3 km²) of land in Bahia de Kino and developed a hunting and fishing camp that became known as the Kino Bay Club. It operated through 1931(Bowen 2000). The Kino Bay Club marked the beginning of a long history of association between the Mexican residents of Bahia de Kino and visitors from the United States.

In 1935 the first fisher cooperative – La Sociedad Cooperativa de Produccíon Pesquera Lázaro Cárdenas – was formed with 25 members (probably comprising most of the adult male population on Bahia de Kino at the time).

The late 1930s saw the rapid development of the shark

Shark

Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

 fishery that supplied shark liver oil

Shark liver oil

Shark liver oil is obtained from sharks that are caught for food purposes and are living in cold, deep oceans. The liver oil from sharks has been used by fishermen for centuries as a folk remedy for general health...

 to the U.S. for use in the production of vitamin A

Vitamin A

Vitamin A is a vitamin that is needed by the retina of the eye in the form of a specific metabolite, the light-absorbing molecule retinal, that is necessary for both low-light and color vision...

 supplements (Doode 1999, Bahre & Bourillon 2002). By 1945 the population had grown considerably to about 500 inhabitants all of whom were involved primarily with fisheries (Weaver et al. 2003). The region in general was growing as well. The establishment of the local Distrito de Colonización Presidente Miguel Alemán

Miguel Alemán

Miguel Alemán may refer to:*Miguel Alemán González, general in the Mexican Revolution; father of:*Miguel Alemán Valdés , president of Mexico from 1946 to 1952; father of:*Miguel Alemán Velasco Miguel Alemán may refer to:*Miguel Alemán González, general in the Mexican Revolution; father of:*Miguel...

 between Hermosillo and Bahia de Kino coupled with the recent availability of subterranean water pumping technology allowed for large scale, regional agrarian development.

The mid-1940s marked the beginning the industrial shrimp

Shrimp

Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...

 fishery in the Gulf of California

Gulf of California

The Gulf of California is a body of water that separates the Baja California Peninsula from the Mexican mainland...

. Shrimp boats, usually displacing less than 100 tons

Tons

Tons can refer to:* Tons River, a major river in India* the plural of ton, a unit of mass, force, volume, energy or power* short ton, 2,000 pounds, used in the United States...

, and operating primarily out of Guaymas

Guaymas

Guaymas is a city and municipality located in the southwest part of the state of Sonora in northwestern Mexico. The city is located 117 km south of the state capital of Hermosillo, and 242 miles from the U.S. border, and is the principal port for the state. The municipality is located in the...

, began trawling

Trawling

Trawling is a method of fishing that involves pulling a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats. The net that is used for trawling is called a trawl....

 for shrimp in the waters of Bahia de Kino. These boats were generally crewed by fishers from Guaymas and, initially at least, had little interaction with fishers from the Kino area (Weaver et al. 2003).

Felger and Moser report that in 1952 Kino Bay “…was a fishing village with less than a hundred inhabitants, several bars, no school and no electricity.” (1985, p. 17). This report is either a) inaccurate or b) correct and the population had fallen from the 1945 figure of 500 reported by Weaver et al. (2003).

In 1953, the road to Hermosillo

Hermosillo

Hermosillo is a city and municipality located centrally in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. It is the capital and main economic center for the state and region. It contains almost all of the state's manufacturing and has thirty percent of its population...

 was paved (Bowen 2000) allowing for increased sales of fisheries products and easier access to lucrative state and national markets. 245 hectares of federal land were set aside that year for the growth of the village while an additional 868 hectares was assigned to Kino to be developed into lots for tourist infrastructure for the recreational use of Mexican nationals. It was hoped that this would generate employment opportunities outside of the fishery for Kino residents in the construction and service sectors of the local economy

Economy

An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area; the labor, capital and land resources; and the manufacturing, trade, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area...

 (Wong 1999).

The 1960s witnessed the early development of the scallop

Scallop

A scallop is a marine bivalve mollusk of the family Pectinidae. Scallops are a cosmopolitan family, found in all of the world's oceans. Many scallops are highly prized as a food source...

 (callo) fishery in the bay. The sand banks in the south of the bay were a primary source of callo with fishers free diving from their boats to harvest the abundant callo beds in the immediate area. Around 1974, the first air compressor

Gas compressor

A gas compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume.Compressors are similar to pumps: both increase the pressure on a fluid and both can transport the fluid through a pipe. As gases are compressible, the compressor also reduces the volume of a gas...

 diving

Diving

Diving is the sport of jumping or falling into water from a platform or springboard, sometimes while performing acrobatics. Diving is an internationally-recognized sport that is part of the Olympic Games. In addition, unstructured and non-competitive diving is a recreational pastime.Diving is one...

 rigs were developed (Cudney-Bueno 2000). The use of air compressors allowed fishers to operate at greater depths and for longer periods of time, increasing productivity

Productivity

Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. Usually this ratio is in the form of an average, expressing the total output divided by the total input...

 per outing (Doode 1999).

The 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the population of Bahia de Kino during which the town grew from just a few hundred residents to several thousand. Most of the new residents were immigrants to the region, some from as far south as Michoacan

Michoacán

Michoacán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 113 municipalities and its capital city is Morelia...

, other from the deserts of Chihuahua

Chihuahuan Desert

The Chihuahuan Desert is a desert, and an ecoregion designation, that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border in the central and northern portions of the Mexican Plateau, bordered on the west by the extensive Sierra Madre Occidental range, and overlaying northern portions of the east range, the Sierra...

 and Coahuila

Coahuila

Coahuila, formally Coahuila de Zaragoza , officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Coahuila de Zaragoza is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico...

. Most had little fishing or boating experience, the developing fishery offered steady employment at a time when many of Mexico’s rural ejidos or cooperative farming

Cooperative farming

An agricultural cooperative, also known as a farmers' co-op, is a cooperative where farmers pool their resources in certain areas of activity....

 and ranching communities were suffering economic setbacks and low productivity (Simon 1997).
In 1975, the Mexican government placed a ban on totoaba

Totoaba

The totoaba or totuava is a marine fish of the drum family that is indigenous to the northern half of the Gulf of California in Mexico...

 fishing – the fishery had been decimated, primarily due to over-fishing at spawning grounds at the mouth of the Colorado River

Colorado River

The Colorado River , is a river in the Southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, approximately long, draining a part of the arid regions on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. The watershed of the Colorado River covers in parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states...

 (Bahre & Bourillon 2002).

From the early 1980s through until the late 1990s the Bahia de Kino fishery increased both in intensity and extent. More fishers in more boats operating over an ever increasing area kept regional production levels in positive growth. The national economic crisis during this period resulted in a new influx of immigrants to the area (Doode 1999).

Trapping for crab

Crab

True crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" , or where the reduced abdomen is entirely hidden under the thorax...

 (Callinectes bellicosus) became an important addition to Kino fishing effort starting about 1990 (Weaver et al. 2003). It is unclear if Kineño fishers had utilized benthic trapping technology prior to the development of the crab fishery .

Several shrimp mariculture

Mariculture

Mariculture is a specialized branch of aquaculture involving the cultivation of marine organisms for food and other products in the open ocean, an enclosed section of the ocean, or in tanks, ponds or raceways which are filled with seawater. An example of the latter is the farming of marine fish,...

 operations began operations around the Bahía de Kino area in the late 1990s and into the present. The local socioeconomic impact of these operations has not been studied. It is unknown if local fishers have interacted with these operations in any economically meaningful way.

Present

Bahia de Kino is home to between 5,000 and 7,000 permanent residents. The area is visited by both local and international tourists. There is a small, but active population of foreign residents, many of whom have built homes in town.

The town is administered as part of the municipality of Hermosillo

Hermosillo

Hermosillo is a city and municipality located centrally in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. It is the capital and main economic center for the state and region. It contains almost all of the state's manufacturing and has thirty percent of its population...

. It is located on land that was part of the traditional territory of the Seri

Seri

The Seris are an indigenous group of the Mexican state of Sonora. The majority reside on the Seri communal property , in the towns of Punta Chueca and El Desemboque on the mainland coast of the Gulf of California...

 people who now live to the north on their communal property.

Despite the town's location and economic importance, there are no harbor or port

Port

A port is a location on a coast or shore containing one or more harbors where ships can dock and transfer people or cargo to or from land....

 facilities (other than the Port Captain's office). All fishing activities are based off the beach to the southwest of town. Two public boat ramps are available; one in the town (located at the Islandia Marina RV Park) and a second 6 miles (9.7 km) north-west of town.

Local people differentiate between Kino Viejo ('Old Kino', the site of the original village and main commercial center today) and Kino Nuevo ('New Kino'). The latter refers to the homes, motels, RV parks, and restaurants that line the coast for several miles north of Kino Viejo.

External links

• :es:Bahía de Kino Spanish version - more information and history
• http://www.kinobay.com Kino Bay - Multi-language version - Complete Portal and Community Forum and Blog
• http://www.bahiadekino.com.mx Bahía de Kino - Spanish version - Full services listings
• http://www.prescott.edu/highlights/kino/index.html Prescott College Center for Cultural and Ecological Studies, Bahía de Kino, Prescott College A.C.
• http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ISONHERM2 Weather and climate data for Bahia de Kino