Guerrero Negro, Mulegé Municipality, Baja California Sur, Mexicoi

Regional Level Types
Guerrero Negro	Town
Mulegé Municipality	Municipality
Baja California Sur	State
Mexico	Country

A very large mechanized evaporative salt production is found here that recovers salt from sea water, by evaporating it in large shallow tidal flats.

This photo looks very similar to pinkish selenites that were collected by John Whitmire. They came from an area of Scammon's Lagoon near the town of Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur.

There was, at that time, a company that produced salt by closing off a small bay full of sea water and letting it evaporate. The first thing that happened was the growth of the green algae as the water temperature increased, then the fairy shrimp started to populate the bay. As the evaporation continued, the brine became more concentrated, the algae died as did the fairy shrimp and selenite crystals started to form. The crystals incorporated some of the red colored dead algae and got a nice pink color. Often, there were fairy shrimp bodies also incorporated in the crystal groups. I often wondered if the final product would have been pink halite groups but I was never there at the finish of the salt process.

John and I found out that if you try to wash these selenite groups to remove the stinking shrimp bodies and let the sun dry them, then the pink color fades nearly immediately. I went on one trip with John and we collected maybe 1500 lbs of these selenite groups up to 18" across. I would imagine that, over the years, John collected several tons of these things.

One way to tell if the specimens you have are from this locality is to wet them and determine if they smell like sea brine and dead algae.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References