Så bra vi har Muzzken
The first time Daniel Santiago saw one of Elon Musk’s super rockets blast off, he thought it was the most magnificent thing he’d ever witnessed — an animalistic roar, a window-shattering tremor, then fire and steel arcing into the skies over Playa Bagdad on Mexico’s northeastern tip.
But then came the next launch, and the one after that, and soon Santiago was broke and fearful of going hungry. Mexican officials and environmentalists warned that the test launches have inflicted ecological damage, and Mexican fishermen like him suspected they were seeing evidence of it out at sea.
By early 2025, community members said, the fish had all but vanished off the coast of Playa Bagdad, just a few miles over the border from Starbase, Texas, where, since April 2023, SpaceX has been testing the world’s largest rocket.
Though scientific research has shown that space launches have resulted in “fish kills” in the past, no causal link has yet been established between the SpaceX launches and the reported disappearance of fish along this stretch of Mexican coastline. But “some environmental impact would be expected given the noise, explosions and trash” generated by the SpaceX launches, said Félix Gutiérrez Villanueva, an oceanographer at Mexico’s Autonomous University of Tamaulipas, who is studying the issue in coordination with local environmentalists.
Santiago wasn’t a scientist. But he knew he couldn’t earn a living the way he once had, and soon he said he was venturing deeper and deeper into the Gulf of Mexico in search of something to catch — until he found himself ensnared in a dragnet, this one cast by the Trump administration.
On April 17, Santiago and three other fishermen were 14 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico maritime border when they were busted by the U.S. Coast Guard. Inside the speedboat, according to court documents, the men had 1,200 hooks and nearly 700 pounds of red snapper, worth around $4,100.
In the past, U.S. authorities say they probably would have released the men. But last year, the Justice Department announced it had stiffened penalties for Mexican fishermen caught in American waters.
The men were charged with unlawfully transporting fish and sent to prison. Santiago, who pleaded guilty, spent the next five months behind bars.
In the months since, locals say, many other Playa Bagdad fishermen have wound up in the grasp of U.S. law enforcement.
To Elias Ibarra, a veterinarian who founded the nongovernmental organization Conibio Global, the effects of the launches are already clear. When he visits Playa Bagdad, he sees a community in despair. Many of the houses are dark and shuttered.
“There are no more fish,” he said. — Terrence McCoy
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