Gone Fishing
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.