Dispatch from Bombay Beach, Salton Sea, California
Text, photographs and web design by Erik Gauger

His days in Africa caused him a heart condition that led to occasional heart attacks. A forced lifestyle change had given him a reconsideration of what to do with his life. He said, "I can grow anything. I learned from hemp, but see, this is all hydroponics. No soil, just water and nutrients. It's a very complicated process. I want to do this for the rest of my life."

"Grow hemp?"

"No, actually I'm going to do aquaculture. I just bought a trailer downtown. I'm going to put tanks in there and raise tilapia."

"Tilapia? You're nuts." Tilapia, the so-called Nile Perch, is a dirty fish, a brackish bottom-feeder from the Northern Nile. Despite African origins, tilapia is known as a Southeastern-Asian standard, and with growing Asian populations on the Pacific Coast of the U.S. and Canada, a market is developing.

I told him, "Tilapia is already being farmed in Arizona. It's one of the cheapest imports from Asia. And besides, it's a disgusting fish!" I have landed at Bombay Beach, coincidentally this has recently been cited as the exact spot as a primary suspect for California's next great faultline. I am at the center of the apocolypse, only it gets worse.

There are thousands of birds here, perched on a number of vacant buildings. Although it is true that this area has become a sanctuary for migrating birds, the pelicans and egrets and seagulls do not fly when I approach. They are sick, many of them. Dying perhaps. Birds in the Salton Basin routinely go through bouts of cholera and botulism.

I am treading through a thick salted crust. Since evaporation is the Salton Sea's only outlet for water, low sea levels mean excess salt. Where there is no salt, there is water and mud, and decaying mobile homes. It wasn't the suspected earthquake that pushed the old Bombay Beach Trailer Park underwater, but rare tropical storms in 1976 and 1977. What was once a booming trailer park community, sank. Now, the half-submerged skeleton is a strange backdrop to the fluttering birds and the tinkle-tinkle of fish bones lapping in the waves.

Maps and Journals Salton Sea Map

Desert Southwest Anza Borrego The Barren Desert The Channel Islands Windblown zoology off the coast of Los Angeles Colorado Plateau, Navajo Country Mesa to Canyon along the Plateau Death Valley The Saltwater Fish of Death Valley Mojave National Preserve Wandering the Eastern Mojave High Desert Stories from California's High Desert Areas Los Angeles Gray River in the Sun Los Angeles Map Imperial Valley Death and Salvation on the New River Panamint Valley Panamint Valley Roach Motel White Sands and Southern New Mexico Atomic Agriculture on the Rio Grande The Salton Sea Bombay Beach and the Salton Sea Slab City and the New River Death and Salvation on the New River Trona, California Trona and the Unusual Lake Searles Western Mojave Four Seasons of the Mojave

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