▲Ana María Giraldo Espina, postdoctoral researcher at the University of California in Santa Bárbara, and María Ecléctica, founder of Mujeres por el Mar, in Puerto Arbolitos, Ensenada Baja California.Photo Jair Cabrera and courtesy of María Ecléctica
Text Jair Cabrera Torres
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, January 19, 2026, p. 13
The climate crisis affecting the Baja California peninsula causes the disappearance of kelp forests or kelp forests. Civil organizations point out that in the recent 10 years, more than 70 percent of these important ecosystems have been lost, which are agents for producing the oxygen we breathe on the planet. In addition, they are nurseries for marine species, which depend on these forests to reproduce. “They are very important ecosystems for all species such as abalone and lobster to exist. All of them have great value in nature. If we do not have healthy forests, we do not have these species, a vicious circle is created and we are missing out on everything,” María Ecléctica, founder and president of Mujeres por el Mar, a group that is dedicated to the research and preservation of marine species in Baja California, told La Jornada. The degradation of these forests is due to pollution, climate change, the hedgehog infestation and warming water, among other factors. “I started diving on October 12, 2020, I have known the kelp forests of the Baja California peninsula and the United States and I have seen how they have been lost every year. I monitor for the Ensenada Scientific Research and Higher Education Center and I have realized how it is degrading. We need a national plan in which all sectors converge: academia, fishing, the media, everyone.” The founder of Mujeres por el Mar pointed out that various investigations have been carried out in the Pacific Ocean; However, there is no money to continue and he asked that it be invested with committed scientists to take care of the kelp forests. “Once those resources are lost, no one has managed to repopulate, not even nature. It is much more expensive to repopulate than to care for it. It is a national catastrophe that we should all be talking about and I don’t know why we are not doing it,” he mentioned. Mujeres por el Mar was founded in 2022, with beach cleaning days, the majority of what they collect is domestic garbage. María concludes: “this loss of kelp forests is multifactorial. Pollution from companies or the government should not only be blamed; it involves us all.
