ABOVE: MATT SAVAGE
In 1989, marine biologist Brigitta van Tussenbroek arrived at National Autonomous University of Mexico in Puerto Morelos, a small village on the Caribbean coast about a 20-minute drive south of the resort city of Cancun. Those were austere days for the researcher. She spearfished for her dinners on the coral reef a short swim from her laboratory. Once, she drove across the Yucatan peninsula to the city of Merida to buy a coffee maker, but the water quality back in Puerto Morelos was so bad that the coffee came out like sludge. Research was a challenge, too—the lab’s air conditioning didn’t work and the microscopes would become full of mold. With no internet or phones onsite, “the only connection for us to the outer world was a radio station in Mexico City,” she recalls fondly.
Over the years, Puerto Morelos and its community began to modernize. The ...
