Ocean Education in a Desert Classroom

These days I’m like a fish out of water. Maybe that’s because I’ve been out of the pool the past couple weeks and wandering about the Sonora desert around Tucson, Arizona in between shoots for Nike’s fall catalogue.

The desert may seem like a far cry from the oceans I partnered with Oceana to help protect, but did you know the Mexican part of the Sonora Desert technically includes some coastline on the Sea of Cortez? Yeah, me neither until I got out here!

As it turns out, this area is in danger because of pollution and because of how the Colorado River is dammed up river in Nevada and Arizona. The Sea of Cortez as well as the towns of Puerto Penasco and Guaymas are popular tourist destinations because whales and dolphins use the warm waters and protected bays in the winter to give birth to their young.

So yeah, tourism depends on us cleaning up our act and more importantly, the survival of the environment depends on us.

Who would have thought I could learn so much about the ocean in the desert. I guess it’s strange to think of the desert having such an abundance of shoreline, but it’s out there. And it’s absolutely worthy of help from our race for the oceans.

AP