December 23, 2024

Laguna Ojo de Liebre: A Salty Sanctuary in Baja California Sur

By Sara E. Pratt, NASA Earth Observatory
April 26, 2022

The whales migrate between their winter season nursery grounds in the lagoons and their summer feeding premises in the Chukchi, Beaufort, and Bering seas.

Laguna Ojo de Liebre. March 23, 2022.
Laguna Ojo de Liebre, a lagoon on the Baja California Peninsula, is a whale sanctuary and the website of among the biggest saltworks in the world.
Laguna Ojo de Liebre on Mexicos Pacific coast is home to one of the worlds biggest saltworks. The lagoon and saltworks are situated near the town of Guerrero Negro, which is approximately midway between the US-Mexico border and the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula.
The saltworks was founded in Laguna Ojo de Liebre in 1954. Each year, employees extract 9 million metric loads of salt by taking shape and evaporating seawater in collection ponds that cover 33,000 hectares (82,000 acres). The evaporation and condensation ponds surrounding Laguna Ojo de Liebre are included in this natural-color image, which was gotten on March 23, 2022, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.

The saltworks was established in Laguna Ojo de Liebre in 1954. The evaporation and formation ponds surrounding Laguna Ojo de Liebre are featured in this natural-color image, which was acquired on March 23, 2022, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.

In addition to salt production, the area also supports industrial fisheries and ecotourism. The lagoon belongs to the Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve. This UNESCO World Heritage Site, the largest safeguarded location in Mexico, is an important whale sanctuary for the North Pacific grey whale. The whales migrate between their winter season nursery premises in the lagoons and their summer season feeding grounds in the Chukchi, Beaufort, and Bering seas. Between January and March, some coastal towns host celebrations commemorating the gray whales as they pertain to birth calves after their long migration. The lagoons likewise host countless other marine types and migrating birds.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, utilizing Landsat information from the U.S. Geological Survey