page_title: Sánchez Magallanes
section_title: Geography and environment
hierarchical_section_title: Sánchez Magallanes / Geography and environment
caption_attribution_description: English: Wetlands just outside of Sanchez Magallanes, Tabasco, Mexico
context_page_description: Sánchez Magallanes is a small fishing town and port located in the far northwest of the state of Tabasco, Mexico in the municipality of Cárdenas. It is named after a leader in the French Intervention in Mexico, Coronel Andrés Sánchez Magallanes. The town is located on small peninsula which is between the Gulf of Mexico and a lagoon called Del Carmen, which the port faces. Fishing is the main economic activity here, especially the production of oysters, although there is tourism and oil production as well. The last has been problematic for fishing and tourism due to pollution. The most serious environmental problem is the erosion of the area’s fragile beaches, especially the thin strips of land between the Gulf and the lagoons.
context_section_description: Sánchez Magallanes is located on a small peninsula which has the Gulf of Mexico on its north side and the Del Carmen Lagoon to its south. This strip of land is still called the Barra de Santa Anna. On the west it is attached to the mainland through a swampy area. The peninsula comes to a point on the east. The main road through the town comes to this point, which then connects to a bridge over a gap that connects the lagoon to the Gulf. The Del Carmen Lagoon is the inland body of water to which the center of town faces. It is one of several small lagoons which are separated only by narrow strips of land from the Gulf of Mexico. This water has tones of blue and green. Boats are available to rent for tours of the body of water or to visit nearby beaches. Rod and reel fishing is permitted. El Pajaral is a small island located near the town, which is a natural refuge for thousands of birds. It is about twenty minutes by boat to reach.
  Like the rest of Tabasco, the town has a most hot and very wet climate. The area’s climate is heavily affected by cold fronts from the north in the winter, which push temperatures down, bringing rain and wind that can be strong. Wind speeds have reached 100 km per hour. In the 1990s, various studies warned that the Tabasco coastline was fragile and vulnerable to erosion by storms. However, neither the federal or state governments have taken action to build sea walls or take other preventative measures. The Sánchez Magallanes area is the most vulnerable because of the lagoons separated from the Gulf by only meters wide strips of land. Damage to these lagoons cause economic hardships to both fishing and agriculture.
  A study in 1998 by the Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco stated that economic activities such as farming and grazing, construction and lack of planning had produced grave environmental damage in the coastal areas of Sánchez Magallanes. These activities has caused much of the native coastal vegetation to disappear. Construction of the coastal highway in the 1970s provoked the disappearance of dunes, allowing waves to come further onshore during storms. This with increased winter storm activity, blamed on the “El Niño” phenomenon and global climate change have caused severe damage in the area with kilometers of beach washed away and farmland and lagoon areas damaged by sea water. Waves during storms now can reach the inland lagoons and causing higher salinity in the ground and water, killing plant and animal species. The manatee and pejelagarto fish have disappeared and oyster production has diminished. There are houses and other structures only meters from the Gulf waterline, which are susceptible to wind and erosion damage, often with only sandbags as buffers. About twenty km of the 92 km highway connecting the town with Paraiso have been destroyed or heavily damaged by erosion. In 2010, the area’s beaches were closed by the state Secretary of Tourism before the Holy Week vacation period because of severe erosion. During the 2009/2010 winter storm season, there was severe damage to the beaches, mangroves and residential areas from here to Paraíso. This included flooding of the Del Carmen-Pajonal-Machona lagoon system, which damaged 104 houses and eroded three km of beaches. In 2010, the state employed foreign experts, principally from the Netherlands to study the erosion problem.
caption: Wetlands just outside town
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D60", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.00", "Image DateTime": "2011:12:24 12:15:29", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "216", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "25840", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9076", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "9", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:12:24 12:15:29", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:12:24 12:15:29", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "55", "EXIF SubSecTime": "50", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "50", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "50", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3872", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "25700", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 2, 0, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "82", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}