more on the laagoon

I completely agree. However -- things are bad enough without making them sound worse than they really are. Playa la Ropa is perfectly safe for swimming. Playa Principal is not. Frightening away potential visitors will not do a thing to help the situation. That is why I feel the need to speak up when people say they haven't swum in the bay for years. There is really no reason to be so alarming.

At the risk of being called an alarmist, I've always wondered how one beach on a relatively small bay could be so polluted that the authorities finally banned swimming, while other beaches within sight of that same beach could be considered safe.
If memory serves, I recall reading somewhere that the ocean currents in Zihua Bay run counterclockwise.....that the Bay is "flushed", (perhaps an unfortunate word in this context) in a counterclockwise direction.
If so, one would expect Playa Las Gatas to be the cleanest, followed by La Ropa, La Madera and, finally, Playa Principal.
(I realize there are other, lesser-used beaches in the Bay).
This "order of cleanliness" jibes with the common wisdom we've encountered in Zihua over the past decade. While I still regularly swim at La Ropa, and have also done so at Las Gatas and La Madera, the latter has been off my list now for several years. We've met some visitors who will not swim at La Madera, and a few who won't swim in the Bay at all.
The shocker, a couple of years back, were pollution figures showing that Las Gatas, which the counterclockwise-flushing-current story says should be the cleanest beach, was not only less clean than La Ropa, but had relatively high bacteria counts, on par with Playa La Madera.
So much, apparently, for the flushing theory.
Given the small size of Zihua Bay, demonizing Playa Principal as "the polluted beach", while extolling the relative safety of the other Bay beaches is whistling past the graveyard.

By the way, thanks for the video. Put Helen in charge of the clean-up crew: that'll get results.