It takes a certain kind of person to be motivated to leave a familiar place and move hundreds or thousands of miles to live in an isolated, rural community with few facilities in the hopes of helping other people live better. I know because I did it myself, but that was thirty years ago! I was anxious to meet the seven pioneers of our Fisheries Fellows Course who were about to commit to spending two years working with small scale fishermen in Baja Mexico.

As they struggled off buses that brought them to Baja — 17 hours I believe one of them had spent on the bus —  I could see they were weary from their journey but incredibly enthusiastic about what was to come. To give just one example: the tall, slim 23-year-old Salvador Rodríguez Van Dyck, who will be working in Agua Verde. What he lacks in years he more than makes up for in enthusiasm. I have a sneaking suspicion he is going to be a star.

Watching them settle in to the beautiful little La Damiana Inn (Loreto), I felt a huge sense of privilege seeing the group as they begun their ten weeks of studies that will launch them as Fellows. I could not help but be inspired by Omar, Salvador, Raquel, Pablo, Dulce, Adriana and Ivan and be incredible proud of my staff Cynthia Mayoral and Constanza Santa Anna, who had made it all happen.

More than 45 Mexican university graduates completed an arduous fellows application process, that for one committed individual involved driving 44 hours to the interview! Of these, seven were selected to join the pilot program. I was anxious to meet these pioneers — the first of what we hope will become a movement. 

The Fisheries Fellows concept is simple: take a group of young, dynamic Mexicans, train them intensively in project management, community planning, and conflict resolution, and then transition them to a small fishing community where they can teach their skills. Rare will provide each fellow with a mentor that is intimately familiar with the site and trusted by its residents. While the concept is simple, the goal is ambitious and challenging: to organize and improve the administration of community cooperatives, legalize their fishing status, and develop tools for sustainable management. 

Building trust, transferring skills and living in often isolated communities with limited facilities will be a life-changing experience for the group of young fellows. It will hopefully be a win-win situation for all. For the local fishermen, they will have a trained expert living and working among them who can help them improve the management of their fishery; for the fellow they will gain practical experience and understand the difficulty of putting theory into practice.

It’s bloody hot in Baja, Northwest Mexico, at this time of the year. I’m in Loreto on the peninsula’s eastern coast, drenched in sweat and trying to survive in 35 degrees C. I’m here to witness the launch of Rare’s latest program – Fisheries Fellows.

As Rare’s Vice President of Programs I have the pleasure of spending half of my life on a plane visiting amazing places seeing our programs in action, making a difference in the world’s most biodiverse places. Today I’m in Baja California Sur.

Northwest Mexico is home to more than 30,000 small-scale fishermen, who provide 50-70 percent of the volume and value of the nation’s catch. The coastal marine environment of the region, which includes the Pacific coast of the Baja Peninsula and the Gulf of California, owes its remarkable biological diversity to a combination of habitats including salt marsh and mangrove wetlands, island archipelagos, eelgrass and algae beds, and the northernmost coral reef in the Eastern Pacific. Deep ocean trenches and nutrient rich shallow sea beds make it one of the most important areas in the world for both commercial and sport fishing. This stretch of sea is home to one-third of Earth’s marine species.

It is also a marine biodiversity hotspot under threat. Pollution, tourism development and insufficient freshwater flows threaten these rich coasts and marine ecosystems, as do intense fishing and the deregulation of Mexico’s commercial fisheries industry.

The line of brown pelicans ponderously skimming the wave tops seem to face no problems fishing the shores of northwest Mexico. The same cannot always be said for the area’s disorganized and disenfranchised fishers, who face bureaucratic administrative systems, lack of law enforcement, low prices, ineffective marketing, and minimal technical support. Many use unsustainable fishing gear and practices, and all of these problems are putting the region’s biological heritage is at risk, as well as the lifestyles and livelihoods of its people. Rare and its colleagues at local NGOs COBI and Niparajá believe they may have a project that can help, and that’s what I’m here to see.