At the end of a six-mile dirt track in lower Baja on the sun-dappled Sea of Cortez, a hand-painted cutout of a whale shark hangs on a cattle fence near a welcome sign for Cabo Pulmo. The sign reads “Santuario de mar, tierra y gente — Sanctuary of sea, earth and people,” a low-key introduction to one of the world’s most productive marine parks.

In the waters just off the small desert village of some 200 locals and owners of solar-powered second homes, you can find mobs of sea lions, swarms of yellow- and bluestriped grunts with big, luminescent golden groupers swimming through their ranks along with huge turquoise, blue, green and orange parrotfish, tiger and bull sharks, shoals of bigeye silver jacks and squadrons of leaping mobula rays that — photographed airborne against the sere desert hills — have become the symbol of Cabo Pulmo’s 28-square-mile national marine park. In different seasons the park also attracts whale sharks, humpback whales and nesting sea turtles. – See more at: http://www.alertdiver.com/Cabo-Pulmo#sthash.cwHAzMrp.dpuf