Conservation Tourism

Reflecting On The Water’s Simplicity & Its Surrounding Complexity

/ Crist Inman / Leave a comment

Photograph by Alejandro Cegarra for The New Yorker

My work in Costa Rica, motivated by previous work on my doctoral dissertation, started with an expectation that to protect nature we should search for entrepreneurial approaches that can complement regulatory and/or philanthropic efforts. Since then I am more convinced than ever that effective conservation depends on all three types of efforts.

So, after reading about the lagoon in the story below my thoughts wander into that territory, hoping that the author and her adopted community find a location-specific adaptation of that trifecta. A key insight of her story is the recognition of how easily perspective can be lost about the phenomenal beauty of some places in their natural state. We adjust, for better or worse:

How a Mexican Lagoon Lost Its Colors

Bacalar is poised to become one of the country’s great tourist destinations—if its ecosystem can survive.

The water of the Bacalar Lagoon, on the east coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, is as pure as glacial ice. It contains scant organic material: some of its oldest inhabitants are oligotrophic microorganisms, so called for their minimal diet. As a result, the lagoon puts on a spectacular display in the sunlight. It’s said that there are seven distinct shades of blue in the water, from deep-sea indigo to sunset violet. In English, Bacalar is sometimes called the Lagoon of Seven Colors; its original name in Mayan, Siyan Ka’an Bakjalal, translates roughly to “place surrounded by reeds where the sky is born.”…

Read the entire story here.