The waters around Cabo are home to a variety of marine wildlife including rays, sharks, mahi-mahi (dorado), and striped marlin.

[6] When the first Europeans arrived, they encountered the Pericú people, who survived on a subsistence diet based on hunting and gathering seeds, roots, shellfish, and other marine resources.

However, American authors such as Henry Edwards and John Ross Browne claim that Cabo San Lucas's founder was an Englishman named Thomas "Old Tom" Ritchie.

In 1917, an American company built a floating platform to catch tuna, and ten years later founded Compañía de Productos Marinos S.A.

The beaches, surfing, and sport fishing opportunities in Cabo San Lucas have attracted a great number of Mexican natives and foreigners to spend their vacations in large-scale tourist developments.

the unique and fragile environment of this part of Mexico was largely unprotected by law, and therefore was subjected to developers acting in concert with government agencies interested only in low-end tourist bonanzas.

There is, however, a growing collection of activists and attorneys now involved in preserving many of Baja's desert habitats, marine mammals, and stretches of coastline.

A number of agencies, including the Gulf of California Conservation Fund[8] and the Centre for Environmental Law in La Paz,[9] are challenging the destruction of wetlands and other ecosystems from Los Cabos to Ensenada.

In the face of a growing international public demand for corporate-driven ecological stewardship, higher-end resorts in the Los Cabos area are increasingly sensitive to their environmental impact and are taking initial steps to institute sustainable practices such as reducing water usage and non-recyclable trash output.

[10] In 2017, Los Cabos was projected to be one of the leaders in travel in Latin America, many of the developments owed to its increased accessibility with added plane routes from the US and Canada.

It is expected that by 2018, 4,000 new sleeping rooms will come online in Cabo, and the increase in tourism will contribute to its growth as a leader in leisure.

Hurricane Odile made landfall at Cabo San Lucas on 14 September 2014, and caused widespread damage.