Every year, tourists from across the globe flock to the south-west corner of Puerto Rico to witness a phenomenon found in only a few select locations worldwide.
Here in the idyllic coastal region of La Parguera in Lajas, the main attraction is a bay by the same name: filled with microscopic plankton that can glow in the dark, the bay turns into a sparkly blue lagoon after sundown. This is one of the only bioluminescent bays in the world; nighttime visitors rush to see it up close, pushing off into the shimmering waters in kayaks.
The delicate spectacle of light has long been a local treasure – but it’s been threatened by a demand for housing by locals and tourists alike who desire a front-row seat to the show.
“We’ve seen a lack of control in the last 10 years,” said Francheska Vélez Ramírez, a 34-year-old mother from Lajas who says the housing boom has changed her home town. “People come here without any awareness toward the environment – they don’t care about the resources, just the party.”
In recent decades, the area around La Parguera has seen extensive gentrification and coastal development. Seasonal and foreign residents have moved into the area, displacing lower-income locals. Urban, wealthy newcomers who have made Lajas their home are referred to by locals as “precaristas”, or squatters. And longtime residents say their new neighbors are having a detrimental impact on the environment by buying up homes on the bay and expanding these properties with new decks and other renovations.
In Lajas, 247 construction permits have been approved between 2015 and 2021, according to the Center for Investigative Journalism. This construction, along with boats passing through the area, stirs up sediment from the ocean floor, reducing the bay’s oxygen levels. These disturbances affect the local plankton and reduce the amount of the light they naturally emit. The bay has also been throttled by multiple hurricanes, which upend its natural pH balance and has contributed to a drop-off in the plankton.
Known as “casetas”, most of these homes are so close to the bioluminescent bay that they are actually in environmentally protected zones. But locals say enforcement of these environmental codes is nowhere to be found.
La Parguera is dotted with lush mangrove trees, which are essential in providing the nutrients that make the plankton shine. Lately, these trees are littered with beer cans, styrofoam food containers and thin plastic cups. In the bay, jetskis and motor boats run amok. Cigarette butts are flicked into the sea.
The coastal town wasn’t always like this. In the 1940s, La Parguera was a quiet fishing village; significant transportation and infrastructure improvements in the 1970s across the island transformed the area into one of the most trafficked tourist destinations in Puerto Rico. Resorts, guest houses and vacation homes boomed, now attracting more than 100,000 visitors a year, according to the island’s tourism marketing organization Discover Puerto Rico. Displacement has a long history in this area: as the tourism industry first took hold, small wooden houses, often owned by fishermen and known as “caseteros”, were then bought out by wealthier families.
Today, second-homers rent out their casetas to tourists who are seeking a glimpse of the bay. One night on the water can cost a hefty $300. By contrast, in Puerto Rico, over 40% of the population lives below the federal poverty level; in Lajas, that figure rises to almost 60%.
In particular, locals see one woman as a symbol of Lajas’ excessive gentrification: Jenniffer González, who serves as Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner, the island’s only representative in Washington. In July, protests ignited over a residence reportedly owned by a member of Gonzalez’s husband’s family; locals claimed the property’s proximity to the bay threatens the mangroves crucial for its bioluminescence.
The fact that a government official could be allowed to enjoy a residence so close to the bay, all while potentially endangering it, feels emblematic of local leaders’ misplaced priorities, according to some Puerto Ricans.
For decades, locals such as Vélez Ramírez have been desperately trying to protect the cherished bay from irreversible damage caused by overdevelopment and lax environmental restrictions.
“I’ve always been careful about actively protesting because I’m a mother of two, but this time I’m scared that my children will lose the opportunity to grow up in La Parguera I knew,” Vélez Ramírez said. “A lot of the fishermen who’ve been here all their life think they don’t have a say, but I have a lot of faith in my generation who won’t be scared to do the right thing.”
Vélez Ramírez fears that if local agencies do not take bold action to rehabilitate the bay, it may be lost forever.
But the best course of action is already known: across the island, another bioluminescent bay in Vieques faced similar challenges and was saved from decline by strict preservation efforts.
Nearly a decade ago, the water at Mosquito Bay was losing its shimmer, and officials swiftly responded to the crisis. No swimming. No motor boats. No construction. This all led to the bay’s eventual recovery.
In contrast, similar efforts for La Parguera have yet to be put into place.
For decades, federal agencies, including the US army corps of engineers, have opposed the construction of floating homes in La Parguera. Legal battles go as far back as the 1970s, but construction in Lajas ensued.
“La Parguera is a living example of neglect,” said Luis García Pelatti, a consultant for Para La Naturaleza, one of Puerto Rico’s largest environmental non-profits. “There’s incompatibility between the actions that must be enforced and what should’ve happened, but never did.”
The Puerto Rico department of natural and environmental resources (DRNA, in Spanish) did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. The US army corps of engineers declined to comment.
The secretary of DRNA told a local news outlet in September that there’s “scientific evidence the bay is diminishing” amid pollution brought in by motor boats and construction.
Para La Naturaleza – which, along with pushing for better public policy, also acquires land in order to help preserve it – owns over 1,600 acres of land in La Parguera. But since 2005, they have been unable to buy up any more land due to skyrocketing prices. In the last decade, Puerto Rico has seen an influx of wealthy foreign investors looking for generous tax breaks arrive on the island.
The newcomers, required to establish residency and purchase property in Puerto Rico to benefit from the tax incentives, have driven up real estate prices and forced longtime residents out of their communities, especially those near the coast.
“They have a lot of money and little concern over how to pay for these lands,” said Neida Pumarejo, director of land conservation for Para La Naturaleza. “They’re our biggest competition, and we’re not in the same economic position as them.”
The question of La Parguera’s future goes beyond conservation – it is a question of equity and who has the access and right to enjoy the natural landscape.
Vélez Ramírez, the Lajas native who aims to keep fighting for her hometown, remembers the sight of empty beaches and the silence that surrounded La Parguera after Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico a year ago. A few days after the hurricane, she and her two children took a night tour of the bioluminescent bay.
Her 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son were in awe, catching a glimpse of what they’ve been missing all these years.
“It was magic,” Vélez Ramírez said. “Without all the boats and tourists, the bay regenerated after the storm.”
