A Snorkeler’s-Eye View of the Gulf of California

A boat trip to document one of the world’s most beautiful, threatened places isn’t the norm for NRDC’s advocates, but this spring and last, that was exactly the assignment for one fortunate crew. In May, part two of the expedition began in the coastal city of Loreto, on the Baja California peninsula. Together, Joel Reynolds, strategist and senior attorney with NRDC’s nature team, embarked with NRDC International Climate Director Jake Schmidt, marine scientist Dr. Steven Swartz, and NRDC videographer Greg Robinson. They navigated the azure waters of the Gulf of California to Guaymas, Sonora, the site where a U.S. fossil fuel company is seeking to build the world’s largest floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal. Reynolds recounts his mission and presents a snapshot of the stunning seascape, below.

Our purpose was twofold: First, to give the world an up-close view of this biodiversity hot spot and UNESCO World Heritage site; second, to uncover details of the location and layout that the Mexican government and project owner LNG Alliance have failed to disclose about the planned American Mexican Integrated Gas Operations (AMIGO) LNG export terminal.                                       

This was our second trip to the region. In 2025, we focused on the northern part of the Gulf and saw an abundance of whales. It was jaw-dropping, really, how many different species we saw over just eight days.

This year, we devoted our nine-day trip to the southern Gulf, where the water is warmer. If you ever have the opportunity to see these waters for yourself, you’ll understand why the Gulf has come to be called the “Aquarium of the World.” There’s an astonishing level of biodiversity, and snorkeling brings you closer to the breathtaking undersea world. We saw sea turtles, manta rays, sea lions, and hundreds of dolphins at a time. The list goes on and on. It’s phenomenal to take in so much in this one stretch of sea.

Some 900 species of fish inhabit the Gulf. We found stunningly beautiful reef fish and a diverse array of game fish—the heart of the region’s fisheries economy. The vast majority of all the fish landed in Mexico are pulled from the Gulf of California, with most sent on to U.S. consumers. And Guaymas has long been a key port for sardines and shrimp, sustaining local families for generations.

The willingness of the fossil fuel industry to put all of this in jeopardy—deploying the riskiest of LNG technologies in one of the most sensitive natural ecosystems on earth—is indefensible. A floating LNG terminal in such a place would only drive us deeper into the climate crisis while setting off a chain of adverse environmental, social, and economic effects throughout the region. 

Incredibly, in the September 2025 Environmental Impact Assessment that was submitted in support of AMIGO, all of the project’s site maps, revealing project location or layout, were intentionally redacted, perhaps at the direction of ASEA, Mexico’s Agencia de Seguridad, Energía y Ambiente. (ASEA is the regulatory agency that oversees energy infrastructure.) The result is no minor inconvenience to the public. Indeed, the result of this obfuscation is to sabotage meaningful regulatory or public review of the project and its potential impacts on the environment, wildlife, and local communities.

To see it for ourselves, we travelled to Guaymas to find the proposed site. As portrayed in a photo provided by LNG Alliance to the trade publication Natural Gas Intelligence in August 2022, it appears that AMIGO would be built on the western shore of the bay, just south of the entrance to the city and its port.  A temporarily closed shipyard would become the land-based portion of the project, joined with a massive floating pier extending into the deep waters of the bay. There, 900-foot vessels would dock to load and transport American-made gas, fracked and piped from Texas’s Permian Basin, overseas to Asia—for decades.

Notably, beyond its southwestern boundary of coastal, craggy cliffs, this sprawling industrial operation would dwarf one of the most recognizable natural wonders of the Guaymas region: a stone coastal arch called “El Arco.” A widely recognized tourist destination, this rock formation is renowned for its views of the bay and entrance to the city. Overall, the region of which Guaymas is a part contributes more than 40 percent of the Gulf’s tourism revenues. This, too, would be threatened by AMIGO’s noxious industrial shadow.

As oceans go, the Gulf of California is relatively young. It was formed some 12 million years ago when the Baja Peninsula separated from what is now mainland Mexico. Fast-forwarding to more recent times, Mexico has built a very strong record of defending the area’s biodiversity. Yet a parade of proposals for industrial development continues to plague the region. NRDC has opposed several of them—most prominently, Mitsubishi Corporation’s unsuccessful plan 30 years ago to transform Laguna San Ignacio into the world's largest industrial salt factory.

As LNG Alliance issues assurances of environmental and economic sustainability for the AMIGO project, it’s sensible to be skeptical. The iconic Gulf is the wrong place for the earth’s largest floating LNG terminal—a World Heritage site in the bull’s-eye of the U.S. fossil fuel industry. The list of environmental red flags is long: Frequent tanker traffic, increased undersea noise, elevated whale-strike risk, methane pollution, heated water discharges, and exposure to invasive species carried in ballast water are just a few.  

What’s happening in the Gulf of California today represents an existential challenge for the world. Are we going to protect nature at its best from the industry that is threatening the entire planet? This is the fight before us, and, with our Mexican partners, we are determined to win.

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