Mazatlan - The Estuary

Pacifico Brewery (and a Mexican naval vessel).

Dwarfed by the Sapphire Princess.

Little Blue Herons, and lots of Brown Pelicans and Magnificent Frigate Birds (among others).

A bird sand bar.

There was an astonishing amount of trash along the shores of the estuary, particularly when close to the city (Mexico seems to have an even worse problem than the U.S. does regarding public trash), but as we got farther into the mangrove swamp, the amount of trash diminished to near-natural levels.

The Carmelita G. shrimper (or is this a tuna vessel?)

The largest tuna cannery in Sinaloa.

Isla de la Piedra, Cerro del Creston, and the Sapphire Princess, as seen from the distant reach of the estuary.

The Gates of Hell: an oil-fired power plant - with no pollution controls whatsoever!

The whole sky is affected by this huge plume!

Regarding this power plant with the amazingly-dirty exhaust, here is some encouraging news:

In the late summer of 2009 the oil-fired power plant near Mazatlan operated by Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) awarded a contract to Altrom Power to install air quality control systems. Alstrom is a Swiss based company that specializes in power development and clean air technology around the world. The work began with design and engineering to install electrostatic precipitator technology to capture and remove the larger particulate emissions (much of the “black stuff”) that is so readily visible from Estrella del Mar. The equipment installation is planned to be finished in 2011. The precipitators will filter the plant’s flue gas, greatly reducing particulate output to about one tenth of the current emissions.

The Hurricane of October, 2009 sank this shrimper.

Taking a moment away from the shrimp to wave.

A diversion of water from the estuary to feed a shrimp farm that was just out-of-sight was also pointed out to us by our guide.