The Punta Abreojos fishing cooperative is more than 70 years old and although they are currently the largest greenfinch producers in Mexico, in recent decades they have become more aware because they caught smaller and smaller species.
To reverse that, Eduardo Enriquez, oceanologist and secretary of the cooperative, says that they modified their fishing gear to be more selective and that led them, together with seven other cooperatives in the North Pacific region, to implement good practices to ensure sustainable fishing that has faced them with great challenges.
“Our cooperative is based on having a balance in caring for the resource, on the social and economic side. We do not forget that it is an economic activity, however, it dies if we don't take care of the resource. And this is how the sustainability part of the resource begins, thinking about capturing larger species, without affecting the small ones, which are the ones that maintain the population,” said Enríquez, who participated as a speaker in the Regional Festival of Sustainable Fishing and Aquaculture organized by the Intercultural Center for Deserts and Oceans Studies (Cedo).
The path to sustainability
One of the first major steps taken by the Punta Abreojos cooperative was the implementation of the Ikejime technique, as a result of a collaboration with SmartFish in 2013. This Japanese method for slaughtering fish, which aims to avoid unnecessary stress and suffering from fish, opened up the possibility of providing a better quality product and selling it at a better price.
“We are one of the most important producers in the state. We used to produce around 1,200 tons of verdillo a year and, currently, we are at 800, but it's not because we don't have resources, it's precisely because we are trying to lower the productive part in order to leave more organisms in the environment and give that extra value or that added value to the resource and that it is given the importance it should, because after all, verdillo is a quality product and if we add these techniques to it we enrich and strengthen that quality so that it detonates in the market,” said Enriquez.
The second major step was when in 2018, with the interest of the cooperatives of Natividad Island, Turtle Bay, Asunción Bay, La Bocana and Punta Abrejos, they initiated a Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP), an initiative designed to improve the management and practices of a specific fishery, in this case verdillo, and maintain sustainable fishing.
“The Verdillo FIP is focused on three principles: the first is that the population of the species is healthy and not overexploited. The second is that fisheries do not greatly affect the ecosystem, and if they are being affected, steps are taken to remove it. And the third is that fisheries have a governance mechanism with rules that bring them to sustainability,” said Belén Ojeda, coordinator of the Verdillo FIP and part of the organization ProNatura Noroeste.
However, there are currently fishermen within cooperatives who are committed to fishing in volume as the best way to generate income, so one of the challenges has been to make them aware that it is the management of the fishery that will provide greater added value and better income.
Another great challenge has been to find markets that pay for all the effort they invest in capturing the resource so that production is sustainable.
“The traditional market is practically not demanding our product or is doing so at a very low price that is not profitable. We are looking for markets because, although we have allies, we believe that more can be added, especially because the culture of fish and seafood consumption in Mexico is in the process of understanding and buying quality and local products,” said Enriquez.
Currently, the cooperative has a certified processing plant where it vacuum-packs green vegetables, employs people in the community and supplies hotels and restaurants in Baja California Sur, Guanajuato, Cancun and Mexico City.
“The opportunities for verdillo and other species of cooperatives in Baja Sur are enormous. There are products that have historically had a very low value, such as verdillo, but whose quality-price ratio is enormous. It's very nice, very good and with a very competitive price,” said Rubén Guzmán, CEO of the fish and seafood marketer Nueve Palmas.
On their own, chefs such as Benito Molina and Héctor Palacios, consider that they have the challenge of giving continuity to the value chain of marketers and cooperatives with their dishes and of communicating all the effort behind it to the final consumer.
“The restaurant becomes the showcase, it's the showcase where all this is communicated, especially the work that fishermen do to ensure that it has the ultimate quality. You have to work on it in many ways and communicate this in the menus,” Molina said.
In the future, cooperatives seek certification of the fishery to ensure that the product is of quality and that the good management of the fishery and the flavor of the product are recognized, Ojeda said.
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