At least three times a week, Beatriz goes to her source of well-being: the beach. There, she surfs the cold, perfectly crashing waves of Todos Santos Bay under the cloudy sky, surrounded by dolphins, pelicans and seagulls. He clears his mind, exercises and lives with others and other surfers.
Surfing shares the bay with the port activity of Ensenada, Baja California, in northwestern Mexico overlooking the Pacific. The expansion of the commercial, tourist and naval port in the city of Ensenada has affected wave areas, but given the announcement of the project to expand the El Sauzal port, the surfer community is not willing to sacrifice another wave.
El Sauzal expansion project
Source: Environmental Impact Statement of the El Sauzal port expansion project in 2010.
El Sauzal is a town with a fishing port nine kilometers from the city of Ensenada. Both the ports of El Sauzal and Ensenada are located inside Todos Santos Bay, officially declared the first World Surf Reserve in Mexico in 2014 and the second in Latin America, due to its high-quality waves all year round.
“Surfing a wave requires certain characteristics that are difficult to find, such as the wave continuing to break and not completely shutting down. Ensenada has several spots with perfect breaks, something that doesn't happen on any beach, that's why people from all over the world come to surf our waves. San Miguel is a perfect world-class wave, just like Tres Emes and Stacks,” said Antonio Otañez, president of the Baja California Surfing Association (ASBC) about the different beaches.
With the objective of consolidating the port of Ensenada as a tourist destination with cruise ships and marinas, the Ensenada National Port System Administration (Asipona), which manages both ports under concession, plans to transfer all fishing activity from the port of Ensenada to El Sauzal, as indicated by the Master Port Development Program presented by the Secretariat of the Navy in November 2023.
However, expanding the port of El Sauzal would mean disappearing and deforming three of the most important waves for surfing within the reserve: Stacks, Tres Emes and San Miguel.
“From what you can see the public images of the project, the waves we surf remain inside the breakwaters and there is no way to save them. The one that is left out is San Miguel, but the breakwaters change the processes of circulation and transport of sediments and the sure thing that will happen is that this wave will deform,” said Beatriz Ibarra, an oceanologist and surfer in Ensenada.
Source: Presentation of projects for 2023 by Asipona Ensenada.
According to the program, it would require: the expansion of the breakwater, the formation of new operating areas, the construction of a fishing pier, operations offices, a linear park and a tourist boardwalk. However, there is no other official document that further details the project.
“This business is customs and transportation and all that income stays in the federation, we as a city are only going to have the impacts left and we will have to learn to live with that,” Ibarra said.
In 2010, Asipona Ensenada tried to obtain environmental permission from Semarnat for the expansion of the El Sauzal port, but it was denied because it did not envisage sufficient measures to mitigate the environmental impact.
Front of resistance
Tres Emes Beach, one of those that would be affected by the expansion of the port. Source: Colectiva Nosotras y el mar.
Ibarra traveled 24 years ago from Guanajuato to Baja California to study oceanography at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC). Upon arrival, he discovered San Miguel Beach with its perfect waves, an environment full of life with fishermen and a surfing community that soon became his family. To the rhythm of the waves, he has lived the most precious moments of his life.
However, he has witnessed the deterioration of his favorite beaches due to pollution with garbage and wastewater and the closure of accesses that lead to the sea. These concerns echoed in a group of women surfers who recorded a video in 2021 to make these problems visible, including Ibarra.
The success of the video led them to group up under the collective Nosotras y el Mar, and to give talks, workshops, participate in forums and organize beach cleanups ever since.
When the El Sauzal port expansion project took off again, they began an arduous struggle to socialize the impacts of the project. For example, in March they convened a citizen opinion forum at the UABC and organized the Equinox Surf Open with the intention of making a massive occupation of spaces dedicated to surfing; while in April they organized the workshop “It's my beach, my neighborhood”, with the intention of encouraging the sense of belonging of beaches in children.
“A lot of people don't know, and if they do, they're not aware of how the project is going to affect them. It's starting to inform people that their beaches are still here, that now we are about to lose them and that just as soon as the beach is going to be lost, they are going to lose their quality of life,” said Ibarra.
These activities have been accompanied by concerned fishermen, the ASBC, the Baja Surf Club, Ensenada Pública, Pro Natura and businessmen from the Guadalupe Valley, a region dedicated to tourism related to wine production.
“Not only does it affect surfers, there is also a connection with El Valle de Guadalupe where there are people who are very concerned because although the wine route is a tourist activity, what they want now (with the expansion of the port) is a very invasive tourism. We are working to ensure that tourism respects identity, and the environment, aware of the carrying capacities of the areas,” said Ibarra.
Blow to the surf economy
While the federation sees port development as a way to generate more income, Otañez sees it as an imposed project that ignores the local impact on the economy of surfing and surfing as a sport.
For example, as with other sports, surfing involves expenses. You have to buy boards, wax and a wetsuit. While for those who are visitors it involves more than that: transport, food and accommodation.
It is estimated that visiting and local surfers contribute between 746,000 and 969,000 dollars annually to the economy of the city of Ensenada, according to a study carried out by the Save The Waves Coalition in Todos Santos Bay in 2015.
In the study, they identified that the majority of registered visitors came from San Diego, California, and 85% of the total said that surfing was the main reason for their trip to Ensenada.
These studies are called Surfonomics and they aim to quantify the economic impact of surfing so that, through understanding the economic benefits to the community, the conservation of a wave as a natural resource is promoted.
“The economic benefits of surfing for the community depend on the health of the coast. For the surf economy to grow in Ensenada, coastal protection is a key element”, concludes the study.
Although the profits may not be comparable to those generated by the expansion of the port of El Sauzal and the nautical tourism of Ensenada, Otañez believes that if you add the economic contribution, and the environmental, sporting and cultural cost that the project would have, it is worth conserving the waves.
“It's very difficult to beat the numbers that the port is going to generate, but if we add to the sports issue the impact on whales and the tourism that comes to see whales, the visual impact of the containers in the bay and the sports theme, you say well, seeing the cost-benefit we don't really want the port,” said Otañez.
Surfing as an Olympic sport and waves as courts
Ana Bárbara García is a parathlete from Ensenada who trains in Tres Emes and who in April won first place in the Adaptive Surf Australian Pro Championship 2025, an annual championship that brings together surfers with disabilities from all over the world. This is the most recent pride, engine and example for defending the waves as the training courts of what is now considered an Olympic sport.
“I always refer to beaches as our courts. When have you seen someone go to a soccer field and drain them or block access? Never. Well, these are our courts, this is where we do our sport, you are throwing sewage at us, you are blocking our access,” said Otañez.
The president has been leading the ASBC for three years, through which he protects the beach and the waves, and promotes surfing through the organization of municipal and state tournaments. Every year she strives to bring more young people to the national championships and to return with more medals than the previous year, however, she worries that those spaces where Barbara and more surfers train will be lost.
“Something that has happened is that politicians think you can surf anywhere and they don't know all this, so we're asking them to listen to us so that they understand it that way. They tell me, go to another beach, but you can't. If the port is built, we won't have anywhere to play our sport,” said Otañez.
The fact that the waves of Todos Santos Bay disappear or become deformed also means ending the potential of competitors that exist in Baja California to represent Mexico at the international level.
“For example, where is Barbara going to train if the port of El Sauzal is expanded? She trains at Tres Emes. Are we going to have to send her to Rosarito? I don't know if I can, she lives in Ensenada and besides, the beaches of Rosarito are polluted. Are we going to have to send her to San Diego?” , Otañez questioned.
In defense of well-being
The sea of Ensenada is a source of well-being for surfers, but not only for them, but also for fishermen; kayakers, yoga or open water swimmers; and those who simply occupy space with friends or family to watch the sunset. It's a very large community that derives its well-being from the sea.
The biggest concern for Ibarra is that if the waves disappear, so will his family, that utopian community that he has only experienced in surfing: loving, egalitarian and supportive. And the tranquility you get from the sea will be interrupted by the noise and presence of ships and cranes.
“As surfers, we are also running out of the spaces we need. For us, surfing is vital, without those spaces I don't know where our physical and mental health, our well-being, will end up,” said Ibarra.
Communities demand to be taken into account when planning this type of project and are confident that through dialogue a project can be reached that includes the voices and needs of all users of the bay.
“We are not opposed to development, but if they presented the project to us and there were working groups where we were included, I think everything would be very different. There we could see how to avoid affecting both parties,” said Otañez.
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