GIVING BACK
When Bob Bisbee Sr. turned over the management of the Bisbee tournaments to his son Wayne 24 years ago, he was confident that his son’s management style and values reflected his own. In addition to involving the family in the day-to-day operation, he was certain Wayne would also understand the need to give back to the people and the community of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
In 2011, Wayne led the effort to establish the Bisbee’s Wildlife and Conservation Fund. In the years that followed, this fund has supported several projects in Baja and beyond. In 2014, Hurricane Odile—the most powerful hurricane to strike the Baja California peninsula— slammed into the luxury resorts of Los Cabos, smashing windows, flooding roads and partially collapsing hotels, injuring hundreds. The Bisbee family went to work, beginning with a hurricane relief fund of $250,000. They worked with crisis assessment teams, set up distribution centers, and secured housing for displaced families. The fund also provided cash to independently owned charter operations for repairs and rebuilding, keeping people working, and ensuring that the sport-fishing industry continue dun interrupted. To reinforce the concept that the region’s tourism was back online after the storm and to encourage more teams to participate that year, the Bisbee’s tournaments offered free entry to any team fishing aboard an approved Cabo-based charter boat.
Another project partners with the Green Scholarship Program and La Paz University, awarding four-year marine biology scholarships to select students who are underprivileged yet have excelled in their studies and who demonstrate a passion for higher education. Their focus is on sustainability, and they work closely with The Billfish Foundation to promote catch-andrelease angling and marlin-tagging projects to learn more about billfish migration.
Beginning in 2015, Tricia Bisbee started working with Hope for Los Cabos, a charity operated by Jen and David Limpert and their extended family. They arrange for all the fish that are brought to the scale during the Bisbee tournaments each year be given to the Limpert’s Fishing for Food program. The ongoing project has yielded 135,000 meals since its inception.