The fishermen of Natividad Island drew attention after the application of drastic measures to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, such as restricting access for visitors to the island. Rules that, although the president of the local fishing cooperative has described as “rude”, have not undermined coordination efforts with scientists to strengthen the network of fishing refuge areas or the carrying out of annual monitoring.
“We are coming to an agreement. Precisely, yesterday we had a call with staff from COBI (acronym for the civil association Community and Biodiversity). It is quite possible that, next month, in June, these monitoring will begin,” Esteban Sandez, president of the Cooperative Society for Fishery Production Divers and Fishermen of Baja California, told Causa Natura.
These are between 10 and 15 days a year dedicated to collecting relevant data on the operation of these shelters. The awareness of Covid-19 is present in the cooperative that tightened the rules for visiting the town of 500 inhabitants. From this account, it is intended that this year, as was done in 2020, it will be the fishermen who carry out the monitoring with the support of COBI.
The monitoring in 2020 demonstrated the learning that local people have had for the task. Housewives and fishermen went on such dives.
“They did it on their own... The NGO threw in and gave confidence to the fisherman, and the fisherman and his companions took the job forward,” the president proudly added.
Until 2020, there were 36 shelters in Mexico that make up 14 fishing shelter networks, a decrease compared to the data at the end of 2019 when there were 43 shelters and 15 nets, according to the Budget Analysis for Fishing Refuge Zone Networks in Mexico (2012-2020), carried out by Causa Natura.
[Find this report and more information about shelters on our Fishing Data platform]
In 2018, the agreement was issued in the Official Gazette of the Federation establishing the blocks of La Plana and Punta Prieta as a network of fishing refuge areas in the waters of the island.
The agreement is the most visible part of a work behind it. The cooperative implemented a pilot project in 2006. They were convinced of the benefits of reserves before and continue to be so, the president explained.
“The studies have indicated that, in fact, there is a dispersion of larvae to the other surrounding areas because the area is kept closed. That is a winning part, the other is that the resources that exist in the reserve over the years do not have the same value as in 2006. In that sense, I think we have won a lot,” said Sandez.
The agreement permanently prohibits fishing for species other than lobster and thus increasing biomass in the area of blue abalone, yellow abalone, red hedgehog, purple hedgehog, sea cucumber, snails, sargacera crab, verdillo, horse mackerel, white horse mackerel and grouper.
Despite the possibility, fishermen have avoided fishing for lobster in reserves, using this fishery only once in the last 13 years with a minimum of traps, Sandez said.
Although the shelters were established simultaneously, Punta Prieta shows better results than La Plana in species such as abalone, despite the fact that the La Plana area had periods in the past when locals banned fishing for years and was known for its abundance, Sandez said.
The COBI report “Totally Protected Marine Reserves in Mexico 2005-2016” stated that after 10 years of monitoring in La Plana, changes were registered in the abundances of some species, which were harmed by hypoxia (lack of oxygen) events. These events occur in part because of the Earth's warming, the winds that generate currents are stronger and bring masses of deeper water without oxygen to the surface.
“The philosophy of the current Fisherman of Natividad Island is that if science doesn't go hand in hand with the fisherman, solid objectives cannot be found,” said Sandez, of this account the cooperative collaborates with COBI and other academic institutions such as Stanford University.
The dream of a refuge
After having made an exchange with fishermen from the La Bocana Progreso Fishery Production Cooperative, in Baja California, the diver King Oliver Gutiérrez decided to promote a reserve when he returned to Puerto Lobos.
The crisis generated by the fall in fishing production in Puerto Lobos, Sonora, was the main fact that Gutiérrez used to convince his colleagues, and thus generate a consensus that would allow him to reverse the fall in the population of octopus, chocolate clams, Chinese snails and scarlop callus.
“I started with my colleagues, visiting house to house. And I began to tell them to visualize the years ago, how much product we were producing and what we are taking out at this time,” Gutiérrez, a member of the cooperative Conservators of Food of the Sea, told Causa Natura.
Finally, in May 2019, the community of Puerto Lobos agreed to stop diving fishing in an area known as El Enegado, after a rock of the same name.
Most of the time, five people participated in ensuring that the reserve area was respected. They climbed the hills to see what was happening in the sea from there, and on more than one occasion they visited fishermen who had broken their word to prevent fishing in those places from happening again, he told Causa Natura.
Although the aspiration of Gutiérrez and other divers was the possible legal establishment of a refuge, the pandemic put the decision to leave fishing restrictions in place in trouble, since the need forced some fishermen not to respect the ban, causing quarrels within the guild, the diver said.
“In total, people did look at a result... I didn't intend to say yes, in saying you know what, you can already work, but rather give it a handle. But we have already started to look at the pandemic situation, work began to be cut back, a lot of things, so we opened it for the same reason,” said the diver about the opening in May 2020.
After the renovation
The agreements establishing a network of fishing refuge areas have a period of 5 years and in Punta Allen, Quintana Roo, preparations have already begun to renew this agreement in Ascension Bay, which will expire in September.
The Vigía Chico Fishermen's Cooperative Fisheries Production Society decided to go for another five years of temporary fishing in the shelters after receiving reports from the group of supervising divers, made up of members and families of members of the cooperative.
“We had several meetings in which we discussed precisely why it was important, how it had benefited us. Give it perspective on everything we had learned in the process and the decision was made, again, that it had to be renewed. The members of the cooperative agreed with this and we had advice from COBI, helping with the data that has been obtained,” said Ricardo Pérez, a member of the local group of dive monitors.
There are two refuge areas in the bay, Niche Habin and Punta San Juan. The cooperative that has a concession for lobster fishing can temporarily fish for this species, while the agreement also seeks to increase the volumes of other species indirectly.
When Pérez was asked how these areas were determined, he commented that initially there was no knowledge about these places.
“But with people's knowledge that in nearby areas there was a good catch of the species that are there, so monitoring was carried out in the area until they found the precise points where the aggregation areas of species, such as groupers or snappers, were found,” Pérez added.
The benefits of the fishing shelter are not only for the community but for others, and even for the Mesoamerican Reef System, the largest transboundary reef in the world.
Fishing cooperatives have generated knowledge exchange networks. Pérez commented that he participates through applications such as WhatsApp with other cooperatives where he shares how they have provided solutions to different problems, while they have also had the opportunity to participate in international networks on the sustainable management of lobster.
“There has been exchange with many countries such as Panama, Belize, islands such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, in the case of community use, thanks to the collaboration of COBI, which advises many units, we have created connections with others not only here, but in the Pacific,” said Pérez.
Recently, Pérez and members of the Vigía Chico cooperative traveled to Chetumal to advance the formal documentation that will be delivered to the authorities, the fishing community's decision has been taken, the diver said.
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