The governor of Tabasco has announced he will introduce an initiative similar to the one approved Wednesday in Oaxaca, which prohibits the sale or distribution of junk food to minors, effectively putting overly sweet products in the same category as alcohol and cigarettes.
Oaxaca was the first state to take such a step.
“We are also working on a reform initiative to the General Health Law so that the sale of bottled soft drinks, industrialized sugary drinks and food that some say is junk is not allowed in schools,” Adán Augusto López Hernández said Thursday, adding that early in his administration he did the same thing with hospital vending machines.
“We must return as much as possible to [eating] traditional food, and we must start with the children so that they are educated,” López said.
The Oaxaca measure, which was backed by the United Nations Children’s Fund and other international organizations, has drawn criticism from business owners.
Cuauhtémoc Rivera, president of the National Association of Small Merchants (Anpec), commented that in a state where 66% of the population lives in poverty “you are asking them to have a California diet.”
Rivera also warned that Oaxaca’s 58,000 corner stores could lose at least 50% of their sales due to the measure and urged Governor Alejandro Murat to veto the bill.
Small shops are already having a rough time of it. A study by the consultancy Bain & Company revealed that during the first half of the year, around 150,000 corner stores closed across Mexico, and if conditions do not change another 50,000 could close each month.
The average corner store inventory is 70% soft drinks and packaged foods and a decrease in the sale of these items would represent a significant burden for shopkeepers.
According to Anpec, “prohibiting the sale of these products is a measure that will close many of the small businesses in Oaxaca, causing job losses, more business closings and despair in the families that make a living from their sale,” the association stated. “With this initiative, in Oaxaca a 17-year-old will be able to work, drive a vehicle or complete military service but not buy chocolate, a pastry or a soft drink at their neighborhood store.”
The enactment of the law comes as health authorities blame Mexico’s high coronavirus death toll on diet-related diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Deputy Health Ministry Hugo López-Gatell, who has declared his support for the Oaxaca law, last month described soft drinks as “bottled poison.”
The governor of Puebla, Miguel Barbosa, joined the Tabasco governor in praising Oaxaca’s anti-junk food law and said that he, too, might consider such a measure.
A patient with coronavirus symptoms is admitted to a Puebla hospital.
As Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll passed 50,000 on Thursday, the federal government’s coronavirus czar declared that it’s time to move to a “second phase of response” to the pandemic.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell reported Thursday night that the death toll had increased to 50,517 with 819 additional fatalities registered.
He also reported that Mexico’s accumulated case tally had risen to 462,690 with 6,590 new cases recorded by the federal Health Ministry.
Earlier on Thursday, López-Gatell met virtually with state governors and federal cabinet members and told them that it’s “essential” to transition to “side B” or the “second phase of response.”
He stressed that a transition to a new phase of management of the pandemic doesn’t imply that the response to date has failed.
“In a review of what we’ve done up to now, we identified elements that allow us to conclude that the management [of the pandemic] has been correct … and compatible with international recommendations and standards,” the deputy minister said.
López-Gatell said the fact that the government carried out a review of the strategy to date – which included a two-month-long national social distancing initiative and the enforced closure of most nonessential businesses between late March and the end of May – doesn’t mean that it regrets the way in which it responded.
Instead, the government is acknowledging the “need to prepare ourselves for a phase which, due to its duration and the burden it has on the economy and society, requires other complementary approaches,” he said.
The deputy minister said that in the “second phase of response,” a balance needs to be found between stopping the spread of the coronavirus and reactivating the country’s economic and social life.
Avoiding an increase in hospital occupancy levels and reducing Covid-19 deaths will continue to be part of the government’s strategy moving forward, López-Gatell said.
He said that a review of the government’s coronavirus stoplight system – used to assess the risk of infection in each of the the 32 states and establish which mitigation measures should be tightened or eased – is also needed.
The daily tally of coronavirus cases and deaths. Deaths are numbers reported and not necessarily those that occurred each day. milenio
Federal health officials will meet with members of the National Health Council on Monday to look at ways that the stoplight system can be improved. The views of governors, some of which have rejected the federal stoplight system, will be taken into account, López-Gatell said.
He reiterated to governors at Thursday’s virtual meeting that the coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to end any time soon.
“To my knowledge there is not a specific prediction about the length [of the pandemic] or an end date,” he said, adding that it could last two or three years with new outbreaks interspersed with lulls.
“There is no doubt that it is going to be a long epidemic. A prediction about a possible end point is extraordinarily difficult to make.”
He also renewed his warning that the flu season, which runs from October to March or April, could coincide with new outbreaks of the coronavirus. That situation would place even greater pressure on Mexico’s health system.
At last night’s press conference, López-Gatell said that 43% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients and 38% of those with ventilators are currently occupied.
More than 13,600 coronavirus patients are currently in hospitals across Mexico while almost 4,000 are on ventilators, according to federal data.
Nayarit, Nuevo León and Coahuila have the highest occupancy rates for general care beds, at 79%, 71% and 65%, respectively.
Nuevo León has the highest occupancy rate for beds with ventilators, at 65%, followed by Colima and Tabasco, where 59% and 53%, respectively, of those beds are in use.
Mexico’s death toll doubled from 25,060 on June 25 to 50,517 on Thursday, a period of 43 days. In that period, an average of 592 Covid-19 deaths were reported each day.
While Mexico has now officially tallied more than 50,000 Covid-19 fatalities, several studies have concluded that there have been tens of thousands of deaths in excess of the official count. A low testing rate means that the number of people who have been infected with the coronavirus is almost certainly much higher than Mexico’s official case tally shows.
Even as the coronavirus situation worsened, President López Obrador, who came under fire early in the pandemic for downplaying its seriousness, has claimed that the outbreak has been controlled and has said repeatedly that the country would soon overcome it completely.
However, several Health Ministry forecasts about when new case numbers would reach their highest point were proved wrong and just this week the Pan American Health Organization predicted that the outbreak would peak in August.
López Obrador has predicted a quick recovery but many economists are forecasting that the Mexican economy will decline by 10% or more in 2020, which would be the country’s worst economic performance since the Great Depression.
Friday is International Beer Day and it’s an event that Mexicans can celebrate: the beer industry is recovering after it was shut down during April and May due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Cerveceros de México, the national brewing industry association, exports are currently at 70% of 2019 levels, production is at 80% and distribution is at 90% of what it was last year.
Beer’s production chain, which has 55,000 direct and 600,000 indirect employees, was disrupted during the coronavirus lockdown as it was considered a nonessential business and was ordered to close down, leading to beer shortages across the country and skyrocketing prices of existing stock.
Despite the shutdown, all 55,000 employees have remained on the job, said Karla Siqueiros, director of Cerveceros de México.
However, faced with a slow reopening of restaurants, bars and sports activities, the Mexican beer industry expects a staggered recovery, she said, as it struggles to make up for lost time amid the current economic crisis.
Beer industry chief Siqueiros: returning to normal.
“Our challenge is to meet our international commitments as an export power, to maintain production,” Siquieros explained, adding that the industry represents 1% of Mexico’s gross domestic product and 25% of agro-industrial exports.
Beer is, indeed, a major industry in the country. The largest exporter and fourth-largest producer of beer in the world, Mexico produced 124.5 million hectoliters of beer in 2019, of which 40 million were exported to 180 countries.
Judging by the near panic that broke out in some regions of the country as beer supplies withered and black-market beer smuggled in from the United States sold for 300% more than pre-pandemic prices, beer is an important product for Mexicans, although not an essential one in the government’s eyes.
According to market researcher Kantar Media, Mexicans consume between 22 and 23 liters per capita each year.
In the first quarter of this year, before the coronavirus hit, production was up 7% and the industry is hopeful it can regain that momentum and end the year at pre-coronavirus levels.
“Yes, the pandemic had a strong impact; we are trying to return to normality as soon as possible, to the capacity, production [and] the numbers that we were driving … and if we do not achieve it we hope to be close to what we obtained in 2019,” Siquieros stated.
The United States has lifted its blanket warning to U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel due to the coronavirus pandemic but continues to warn Americans not to travel to Mexico.
“Do not travel to Mexico due to Covid-19. Exercise increased caution in Mexico due to crime and kidnapping. Some areas have increased risk,” says the August 6 travel advisory.
“Travelers to Mexico may experience border closures, airport closures, travel prohibitions, stay at home orders, business closures, and other emergency conditions within Mexico due to Covid-19.”
The advisory also says that violent crime – homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery – is widespread in Mexico.
The State Department also advised U.S. citizens not to travel to Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán and Sinaloa due to crime and to Tamaulipas due to crime and kidnapping.
The travel advisory says that U.S. citizens should reconsider travel to Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Jalisco, México state, Morelos, Nayarit, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Sonora and Zacatecas because of crime.
Notwithstanding the Mexico-wide “do not travel advice,” U.S. citizens are urged to exercise increased caution in the 16 other states.
Among those where it recommends “increased caution” are Guanajuato, Mexico’s most violent state; Quintana Roo, home to the popular tourist destinations of Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum; Mexico City; and Yucatán.
More detailed information for each state is included in the travel advisory.
The advisory states that the United States government has limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in many areas of Mexico because travel by U.S. government employees to certain areas is prohibited or significantly restricted.
It also says that U.S. government employees may not travel between cities after dark, may not hail taxis on the street, and must rely on dispatched vehicles, such as those from app-based services like Uber or from regulated taxi stands.
In addition, government employees mustn’t drive drive from the U.S.-Mexico border to interior parts of Mexico or vice versa, with the exception of daytime travel within Baja California, between Nogales and Hermosillo on federal Highway 15D, and between Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey on Highway 85D.
United States Ambassador Christopher Landau acknowledged on Twitter that the U.S. had eased its blanket advice against international travel, in place since March 19, “because some countries have relatively low infection rates.”
In another Twitter post, Landau wrote that in Mexico, “the government itself acknowledges that infection rates are still relatively high.”
“In fact, the entire country has a red or orange stoplight [on the government’s stoplight system to assess the risk of coronavirus infection]. For now Mexico (like a lot of the world) remains at level 4 [do not travel]. The warning will be continuously reviewed during the pandemic,” the ambassador said.
Mexico is one of more than 50 countries to which the Department of State is advising U.S. citizens not to travel. Other countries with large coronavirus outbreaks including Brazil, India and Russia are also on the list.
As of Thursday, Mexico has recorded 462,690 confirmed coronavirus cases, the sixth highest tally in the world, and 50,517 Covid-19 fatalities, the third highest death toll.
Unlike many countries, Mexico has not banned the entry of foreign travelers even as the coronavirus pandemic worsens here and in many nations around the world.
The Maya Train will run on electricity on approximately half of the 1,500-kilometer railroad to be built in Mexico’s southeast.
It was announced in June that the tourist train would be powered by diesel rather than electricity in order to keep operating costs down but the head of the National Promotion Tourism Fund, which is managing the rail project, said Wednesday it had been decided that the Mérida-Cancún and Cancún-Chetumal sections would be electrified.
Rogelio Jiménez Pons said a tendering process to find a company to install electrical infrastructure is being prepared and will be launched in early 2021.
He said the electrification of the two sections, which are expected to be the busiest in terms of services and passenger numbers, will be the second most expensive process in the entire Maya Train project.
“After several analyses, we opted for … electrification where there will be greater activity,” Jiménez said.
Fonatur chief Jiménez said the Mérida-Cancún and Cancún-Chetumal sections will run on electricity.
He added that electrification of the two sections – expected to cost about 25 billion pesos (US $1.1 billion) – will raise the overall price of the project but save money in the long term because maintenance will be easier.
Jiménez said the cost of the project, including construction of tracks in Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Chiapas, was estimated at the end of the second quarter to be 156,000 billion pesos (US $7 billion).
That amount, which doesn’t include the 25 billion pesos for electrification, is 12% higher than an estimate in April because the cost of widening the highways between Mérida and Cancún and Cancún and Chetumal was added.
But Jiménez said he was in discussions with Finance Ministry officials to have the highway work costs excluded from the Maya Train project.
If the Finance Ministry agrees to that, the total cost including electrification will be about 165 billion pesos, (US $7.4 billion), he said.
López Obrador has pledged that the project will be finished by October 22 and create 80,000 jobs this year and 150,000 in 2021.
The Mexican company ICA will build a section of track between Izamal and Cancún, while a consortium led by billionaire businessman Carlos Slim won the contract for the construction of a stretch between Escárcega and Calkiní in Campeche.
A consortium led by Portugal’s Mota-Engil and the China Communications Construction Company won the contract to build a section between Palenque, Chiapas, and Escárcega, Campeche.
Jiménez said Wednesday that seven separate tender processes will also be held to find companies to supply and install the actual tracks. The first tender process, that for the Palenque-Escárcega section, will be launched on September 24, he said.
“We decided to call for bids for the tracks by section so that there’s no cannibalism among the companies. The experience that we had in the previous tenders is that the competition is resulting in good discounts for the government …[while] always meeting quality and experience standards.”
The rail project has been opposed by many indigenous groups on environmental and cultural grounds – and some communities have taken legal action against it – but federal authorities deny that it will have an adverse impact.
According to López Obrador, the Maya Train, which was endorsed by a controversial consultation last December, will spur economic and social development in Mexico’s long-neglected southeast.
The Environment and Agricultural ministries have clashed over the use of a herbicide.
The federal Environment Ministry (Semarnat) is pushing for a presidential decree that would ban the use of the herbicide glyphosate although the Ministry of Agriculture may have a different view.
Environment Minister Víctor Manuel Toledo told a virtual forum Tuesday that he was hopeful that President López Obrador would issue a decree against glyphosate, the active ingredient in the Monsanto herbicide Roundup, whose effect on human health is hotly contested.
He said the aim is to completely eliminate the use of glyphosate by 2024.
The environment minister said Semarnat is seeking a ban on a total of 80 herbicides and pesticides due to the harm they cause human health and/or the environment.
Toledo said the Environment Ministry is currently working to clean up six highly-contaminated waterways where children have become sick due to exposure to glyphosate.
Toledo, left, and Villalobos.
Semarnat, led by Toledo since May 2019, began banning the importation of the controversial herbicide last November, invoking the “precautionary principle” enshrined in national and international law. To date, the ministry has stopped the importation of some 67,000 tonnes, Reforma reported.
Toledo reiterated in May that action toward a total ban on the use of the herbicide was urgently needed.
He said at the time there was clear evidence that glyphosate – mainly used in Mexico’s south and southeast – has caused damage to people’s health and the country’s biodiversity.
In June, Semarnat and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Sader) agreed to form a working group to establish a plan to phase out its use over the next four years and to assess the risk the product poses.
Sader on Tuesday sent a draft plan to the National Commission for Regulatory Improvement (Conamer) that said the ministry, along with Semarnat and the National Council of Science, would carry out the necessary technical studies to assess the safety of glyphosate. If it is deemed to be unsafe, new technology will be developed to manufacture a substitute, it said.
In its proposal, the Agriculture Ministry said the safety studies would be carried out over a period of four years whereas Semarnat wants glyphosate to be completely banned within the same time frame.
Glyphosate, the herbicide at the center of the debate.
As a result, Toledo lashed out at Sader, asserting that the draft plan it sent to Conamer went against López Obrador’s instructions.
ANEC, a national agricultural association opposed to the use of glyphosate, also rejected Sader’s proposal, charging that Agriculture Minister Víctor Villalobos acted unilaterally in its formulation and agreeing with Toledo that it contravened the president’s instructions.
It called on López Obrador to ensure compliance with the agreements reached for the use of glyphosate to be phased out.
ANEC said that a joint strategy toward a new agri-food model in which toxic agricultural products are not used is urgently needed.
“The government … set out the urgent need to rescue the countryside and guide the country toward [agricultural] self-sufficiency and food sovereignty. In this sense, it’s clear that the corporate industrial agriculture model … has not been able to nor will it be able to create alternatives” that allow Mexican farms to thrive while protecting people’s health and the environment.
A screenshot from the promotional video that was pulled from social media.
Guerrero and federal tourism authorities have withdrawn a tourism promotion video for Acapulco amid claims that it struck the wrong tone as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.
“Since 1930 Acapulco has made its own rules, … Acapulco is an icon of global tourism. Today we stop being a postcard from the past, today we change the rules,” begins the video’s voice-over.
“In fact there are no rules: eat what you want; have fun at day, night and in the small hours; wear what you want; … invite who you want; … relax on your own or with company; redefine yourself and share your craziness; … fall in love without limits. Here you can be whoever you want to be or you can be yourself. … Make lots of friends and new loves,” the voice-over continues.
Featuring fair-skinned and apparently affluent young people, the video concludes with a woman saying (in English), “Mom, I’m in Acapulco.”
Acapulco and Guerrero tourism authorities and the federal Tourism Ministry (Sectur) posted the video to social media on Tuesday but subsequently erased the posts amid criticism that a pandemic is not the time to promote the disregard of rules.
Acapulco: video de Promoción Turística Mom, I'm in Acapulco
The video was made by an advertising agency for the Acapulco Tourism Promotion Trust and the Guerrero Tourism Ministry but was condemned by Governor Héctor Astudillo.
“I regret the mistaken promotional campaign for Acapulco,” he wrote on Twitter, labeling the video “untimely, insensitive and imprudent” given that the coronavirus pandemic is still hitting Mexico, and Guerrero, hard.
“Visitors, as we have always said, we’re waiting for you here #WhenThisPasses,” the governor added.
Gerardo Herrera, a marketing academic at the Iberoamericana University, told the newspaper El País that the video had good intentions – to attract more young people to Acapulco, according to the Guerrero government – but was poorly executed.
He said the video amounted to a “call to imprudence and excess” and given that the world is going through a pandemic, it’s not the right time to do that.
“At no time does it mention safety and the [coronavirus mitigation] measures with which tourism must be reactivated,”Herrera said. “The message that should be given is one of safety.”
It’s ‘untimely, insensitive and imprudent,’ said the governor.
The academic agreed with the many Twitter users who also complained that the video was directed at upper-class, privileged Mexicans who can afford to take a luxurious beach holiday while millions struggle to survive the sharp coronavirus-induced economic downturn.
“It’s a message directed to a premium sector [of the market] when it should be more inclusive and directed to all social strata,” Herrera said.
Sectur distanced itself from the video, saying that Acapulco and Guerrero authorities were in charge of the campaign and that it merely shared it on social media.
Sectur said in a statement that it disseminated the Acapulco video via its social networks “as occurs with all the promotion campaigns that the country’s different tourism destinations carry out.”
The Tourism Ministry added that it decided to remove the video from its social media accounts due to the “various reactions” it generated.
President López Obrador has renewed his proposal that a public consultation be held to decide the fate of a fertilizer plant project in Topolobampo, Sinaloa.
During a visit to the northern state on Wednesday, López Obrador acknowledged that local authorities support the US $5-billion ammonia and urea plant project under construction by the company Gas y Petroquímica de Occidente (GPO) but noted that there have been protests against it.
For that reason, citizens must be given the opportunity to participate in a vote to decided whether the project can continue, he said.
“Only with a consultation [can it go ahead]. … It will be difficult because there are protests, there are groups that don’t accept it. The people should be the ones who decide, we can’t impose anything,” the president told reporters in Los Mochis, located 20 kilometers from Topolobampo.
Construction of the plant began in August 2018 but a federal judge halted the project in March 2019 due to environmental concerns.
The Aquí No (Not Here) Collective has been granted several injunctions that have stalled the project, and has rejected López Obrador’s proposal to hold a public consultation about its future, demanding that he cancel it instead.
Many fishermen say the plant will cause irreparable damage to the Santa María, Topolobampo and Ohuira lagoons and restrict the area in which they can work.
Environmental activists say that marine life such as turtles and bottlenose dolphins will be adversely affected, while the head of the federal government’s Natural Protected Areas Commission said last year that having an ammonia plant so close to lagoons that are protected by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance “is not possible.”
The company and supporters of the project say the fertilizer plant is needed because ammonia production has not kept up with growing demand. As a result, imports have increased and farmers have had to pay more for fertilizer.
GPO hopes to begin production at the new plant in the first half of 2022. The plant would produce about 800,000 tonnes of ammonia and 700,000 tonnes of urea per year for the domestic market.
Several public consultations on a range of projects have been held since López Obrador took office in December 2018.
Most recently, a US $1.4-billion brewery that was under construction by the United States company Constellation Brands was canceled in March after a vote found 76.1% of participants opposed it.
López Obrador canceled the previous government’s US $13-billion Mexico City airport project after a consultation held before he took office found that 70% of participants favored his plan to convert a México state airport into a commercial one.
Government critics say the cancellations of the partially-built brewery and airport have hurt investor confidence and will cost Mexico huge amounts of money in the long term.
Floodwaters caused by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the Atlantic.
The hurricane season is off to a stormy start in the Atlantic this year, setting new records.
The latest was Hurricane Isais, which left at least five people dead as it ripped through the eastern United States this week and was the earliest ninth named storm in history.
And many are storms are to come, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has updated its Atlantic storm predictions for 2020.
Usually, only two named storms form by August, and typically 12 named storms will form throughout the season, with six becoming hurricanes and three developing into major hurricanes.
On Thursday, however, the NOAA announced it is expecting 19 to 25 named storms with seven to 11 becoming hurricanes, three to six of them being major hurricanes.
That’s up from the earlier forecast of 13 to 19 named storms (storms with wind speeds over 63 km/h), of which six to 10 would become hurricanes.
Batten down the hatches.
“This is one of the most active seasonal forecasts that NOAA has produced in its 22-year history of hurricane outlooks,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross stated as the likelihood of an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season soars to 85%. When NOAA’s original forecast was made in May, the likelihood of an above-average hurricane season was assessed at just 60%.
There are a number of factors that contribute to an increase in storm formation. Water temperatures in the Atlantic and Caribbean are warmer than usual, especially in the area near West Africa and the Leeward Islands where many hurricanes are born.
In addition, western Africa is seeing an especially active monsoon season, which can help form thunderstorms off its coast.
La Niña has also cooled waters of the Pacific, weakening trade winds over the Atlantic and lessening vertical wind shear which can stop a storm in its tracks.
Researchers at NOAA and the University of Wisconsin released a study in June indicating that global warming may also help produce stronger storms that can intensify very rapidly.
While the forecast calls for more windy weather, it also means there could be a shortage of storm names.
If 21 named storms form before the end of the hurricane season, forecasters would have to resort to naming them after the Greek alphabet, a situation that has occurred just once before when there were 27 named storms in 2005.
Colorado State University (CSU) meteorologists also predict stormy weather. In a revised forecast released Wednesday, they speculate that this could be the busiest season on record, with 24 named storms and a total of 12 hurricanes, five of which they predict will be major, meaning sustained winds of more than 179 kilometers per hour.
Thus far this season is on track to surpass 2005, when 15 hurricanes formed causing an estimated 3,912 deaths and approximately US $171.7 billion in damage. Thus far, the number of storms formed is the most ever recorded since the satellite era began in 1966, the NOAA says.
“As is the case with all hurricane seasons, coastal residents are reminded that it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season for them,” write the CSU forecast’s authors. “They should prepare the same for every season, regardless of how much activity is predicted.”
The Atlantic hurricane season officially ends on November 30.
A shark got away with a piece of a fisherman's catch in Los Cabos.
People — bathers in particular — should keep an eye out for sharks in Los Cabos, warns the director of the local office of the Civil Protection agency.
Erick Santillán said fishermen have reported seeing sharks off La Ribera, La Playa and Chileno and advised that with the decline of human activity on the area’s beaches, marine life has broadened its natural habitat.
After a shark stole part of a fisherman’s catch, officials in the community of La Playa near San Jos del Cabo decided to close the beach to fishermen and bathers for several hours on Saturday.
Officials were alerted to the possible presence of a shark inside the community’s marina at Puerto Los Cabos after a man fishing from shore reported that a shark ate nearly half of a fish he had hooked.
The beach was reopened the following day.
A scuba diver filmed a school of eight whitetip reef sharks, which are small and not normally aggressive toward humans, some 50 meters off the coast of El Chileno beach in Los Cabos earlier this week, but the beach was not closed.
The whitetip reef shark has seen its numbers dwindle as it is killed for its fins which are used in soup and oil which is valued for medicinal properties.
In late June, the beach at La Ribera in Los Cabos was closed for two days after a drone filmed of a two-meter-long shark swimming in shallow waters just off the beach.
Carlos Narro of the state fisheries association Asupesca explained that after several months without humans, the population of various marine species has grown significantly which in turn attracts sharks. He urged bathers to exercise caution when entering the sea.
The only known shark attacks in Los Cabos occurred when a surfer had his foot bitten in 2005 at San Luis beach, and when a cat-sized shark bit a man’s toe in 2008.
