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Gringo Gazette

Net Traps Used to Protect the Vaquita

Our federal authorities are taking extreme measures in order to protect the “vaquita marina”, the small porpoise living in the Sea of Cortez that is already in the brink of extinction, with a new project consisting of dropping huge cement blocks with a reversed hook in the ocean floor in order to “trap” any net that is used in the area.

Although the northernmost part of the Sea of Cortez is a no tolerance zone for fishing nets, there have been many ships caught using them in the area, that’s why there is constant patrolling in the area from the Mexican navy and the Sea Shepherd NGO.

Authorities dropped 193 of these traps in the protected zone and they have set in place a program to look for lost nets in the ocean to avoid the possibility of a vaquita getting trapped in one of them.

Given the continued rate of bycatch and low reproduction of the vaquita, it is estimated that there are fewer than 10 vaquitas alive as of February 2022.

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Mexico Cancels Daylight Savings, Border Cities Keep It

Mexico’s congress passed a decree a few months ago, effectively cancelling the daylight savings time (DST) change each year starting in 2023, citing that the energy savings was so small that it doesn’t justify the effort of changing our clocks two times a year.

Even though border cities have the same infimal savings on energy during DST, it was decided to keep it active in them, as eliminating would make them have different times than their counterparts across the border, complicating an already sensible economy between them.

Just this week, our state congress, asked for a modification to the decree, as the original text didn’t include San Felipe or San Quintin, and if implemented as is it would effectively make those municipalities have a different time than Ensenada, Tijuana, Rosarito and Mexicali when DST is active.

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Baja 400 Race Brings 12 Million USD to the Local Economy

A 90% occupancy rate in hotels from Thursday to Sunday, and over 12 million USD spent locally was the results of the SCORE Baja 400 race this past weekend.

200 teams took part of the race in this year’s edition, and although most of the competitors came from the USA, there were others from France, Peru, New Zeland, Argentina, Venezuela, England, Denmark, Puerto Rico, Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Chile.

Three teams were not able to enter the race, and 62% of the ones that did were able to finish it.

SCORE authorities stated that they are already working on the Baja 1000 race, for November this year.

Video courtesy of: Jesus Lopez Gorosave
With information from: El Vigia

Daily Border-Crosser Finds Two Migrants in His Trunk

Cesar is one of the many employees who work in San Diego but live in Tijuana, and who almost got himself in trouble unknowingly.

In the early morning hours of that day, Cesar was driving toward the border to cross and get to work but that day something felt weird in his car, as if something was moving.

“On my drive to the border I felt like the whole car was moving”, he says.

“It got to the point where I had to pull over, I was nervous of opening the trunk, and when I opened it, my surprise was that there were two persons inside”, he added.

Cesar was a victim of a group of people traffickers that are putting migrants in the trunk of unsuspecting daily-crossers and charge hefty amounts for it.

When Cesar asked the migrants who had put them in there, they answered that they didn’t know, they didn’t know they were in Tijuana, they were just told they were being taken to Los Angeles.

Fortunately for Cesar he was able to find out about his “hidden cargo” before getting to the border, others have not been so lucky. When he checked surveillance video, he saw that at 3AM someone pulled over next to his car, opened his trunk and had the migrants get in there.

We had reported before that this was happening with drugs, but now it’s also happening with people.

Just last week, a popular soccer player from the Xolos team, was detained at the border when crossing after two women were found hidden in his car. He claims he didn’t know that they were there but at the moment it’s unclear if this is true or not, and he is still detained. The two ladies said they were going to pay 18,000 USD for crossing, but they said they didn’t know the person crossing them.

Authorities are recommending checking the backseat, trunk and around the tires of your car if you are planning to cross the border and make it a regular habit to avoid being a victim of this kind of crime.

With information from Uniradio Informa

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