“Marine regulations in Mexico either have their origin in the fishing law or in environmental rules. Historically, the fishing industry has always influenced regulation to the point that fishing laws were pretty much written by the industrial tuna companies, that of course protected their interests above all. And in the case of the environmental laws, well, those laws were drafted in my house.”

I met Mario Gomez on a warm February morning in the restaurant of the La Catedral hotel in La Paz, Mexico. He was in between important visits — meeting a seventh generation shark fishing community in Agua Amarga and then speaking at the Our Ocean Conference in Panama — so I felt fortunate to cross paths with him and his team and join their weekly breakfast briefing.

Mario runs a myriad of organisations, all working together to achieve the same final goal: increase the amount of functioning Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Mexico. It all started with his work in public policy in the 80s. 

“In the 80s I was part of an ardent group of activists, we were all friends. Mostly we worked to protect Mexico’s forests and jungles. During that time we thought it was necessary for the Mexican government to establish a Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources, including fishing. This is why Beta Diversidad was formed, a policy lobbying NGO. Eventually through this governmental work, we were part of the long process that established the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas of Mexico (CONANP). This is the governmental body that now has the ability to operate and administrate Mexico’s protected areas. Within these there are seven different categories: Voluntary Conservation Area; Sanctuary; Natural Monument; Protected Area of Natural Resources; Protected Areas of Flora and Fauna; Biosphere Reserve; and National Park. Then within our activist group we each chose an area to focus our public policy work on, I chose the oceans.” 

As we sit down for breakfast, Mario has an easy yet commanding demeanor. In classic Mexican hospitality he offers me anything from the menu. The team begins to order every style of egg available. We are 12 people, and every so often someone walks by and stops to catch up with Mario. Clearly he is a very admired and known figure within the community. I already knew that he had been instrumental in establishing the Revillagigedo National Park (Revi), North America’s largest no-take MPA. It has been a dream of mine to explore Revillagigedo’s underwater beauties for years. Revi is on every experienced diver’s bucket list and sits on top of mine. So I asked him, how did he achieve that?    

“Six years ago we established the National Park of Revillagigedo. Within the seven categories of protected areas, National Parks are the most restrictive, no fishing or industrial activity is allowed. Revillagigedo today is one of the largest protected marine areas in the world, measuring 147,933 kilometres. We managed to secure this because we demonstrated to the Government that it wouldn’t affect local fishing communities. The archipelago of Revillagigedo is 400 kilometres south of Cabo San Lucas, artisanal fishers don’t go there, nor do sport fishermen, only the large industrial tuna and shrimp vessels can. We also conducted a study to prove to the industry that only 4.8 percent of their total catch came from that area. Of course now the industrial vessels fish along the margin of the MPA and their catch has overall increased.”

MPAs are a controversial topic within ocean conservation. This is because they are used as political instruments rather than for true conservation. For example in Europe bottom trawling, one of the most destructive forms of fishing in the world, is still allowed within so-called MPAs. This is what makes Revi stand out, absolutely no fishing is allowed.

The Revillagigedo archipelago is in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Baja California Sur and it’s Mexico’s most remote territory. Composed of four volcanic islands and right on the Pacific corridor, it’s teeming with life: from great whites, schools of hammerheads, hundreds of dolphins, whale-sharks, oceanic manta rays and many species of migratory whales. 

“Worldwide Revillagigedo is heralded as a conservation success. The MPA measures five percent of the Exclusive Economic Zone of Mexico. So when it was approved as a super rigid, highly and fully protected area it was a direct assault to the tuna and sardine industry that had been controlling the chamber of fishing for the previous four decades. They were not used to a total fish ban, rather the industry was used to deciding where the subsidies went, setting the quotas, creating their own sustainable labels etcetera… but with Revillagigedo a strong precedent was set.”

In Mexico, many fishing laws only benefit the industry’s interests. For example, a handful of companies retain full exclusivity of certain highly commercial species: sardines, shrimp and tuna. Despite their high revenues, the industry also takes home over 80 percent of the national fishing subsidies. Conversely, Mexican artisanal fishers’ livelihoods are being threatened by the stark decline of fish stocks due to the industry’s destructive methods. The whole system was written and designed to benefit a few big corporations and ultimately the Baja California Sur’s local fishers are the ones suffering the consequences.

I asked Mario if there is a way to help artisanal fishers access more subsidies?

“Yes, we run an NGO called Depesca (Desarrollo Pesquero Sustentable). Depesca represents the interests of artisanal fishers. Technically they already have shares within the fisherman confederation, but the industrialists, the fish farmers, and the authorities are also in the confederation, so the voice of the coastal fishers is severely diminished. And since they have no resources, they are not well organised. Meanwhile, the industrialists have money for management, lobbying, and to convince legislators, authorities, etcetera… So the idea with ‘Depesca’ is to help the fishermen organise. However, in the last five years, we’ve been focusing on a new strategy, we are trying to implement another MPA, a Biosphere Reserve that would span the coast of Baja California Sur, we call it Dos Mares.”  

A Biosphere Reserve is a category below National Park status. This means that artisanal fishers would be allowed to continue operating, whereas industrial vessels would not.

“To do this, first we have to convince the commissioner of natural protected areas to decree a Biophere Reserve, and last week he told us: “the only thing I need is for the coastal fishermen to raise their voices and publicly ask me to implement it.” So, we launched a communication campaign so that the Commissioner of Natural Protected Areas, the Minister of the Environment, the State Governor, and the President himself, feel that the fishers are asking this of them, but it is a difficult process.

“Essentially, the process is that of socialising the Biosphere Reserve, and socialising the reserve is very complicated. Wendy Higuera is a leader in her community and in her town, and half love the idea and the other half oppose it. So we are learning why certain people have issues with it, and it’s basically due to lack of knowledge and misinformation.”

At the weekly meeting, Wendy and Manuel Higuera are present. They are two local fishers from the town of Lopez Mateos in Magdalena Bay, about 300 kilometres north-west from where we are. Wendy is leading the campaign to push for the reserve and is the President of Depesca. They drove here to visit another fishing community near La Paz, Agua Amarga. Wendy explained how local fishers will benefit.

“We know that by conserving we are going to increase the mass of fish, we are going to improve our fishing and we are going to take advantage of resources that we have not been able to due to the industry’s interests. So I’m talking to other communities explaining to them that we can use our traditional fishing gear in a responsible manner, that we can use our boats for tourism purposes in certain seasons, and that our catch will be higher. I’m speaking to them in their language, from one fisher to another, so that they understand that ultimately the Biosphere Reserve would remove industrial fishing from our shores allowing our fish to reproduce. And that we don’t want to convert them all into tourist operators, we want to preserve their way of life, because our life is fishing.”

Magdalena Bay, where they live, is known worldwide as a breeding area for gray whales and for its yearly sardine runs. I had just visited the famous bay the day before and was awe-struck by the grays’ spy-hopping behaviour and friendly attitudes—spyhopping is when a whale bobs its head out of the water to check you out. To someone accustomed to the empty blues of the Mediterranean, MagBay seemed bountiful. I ask them what, if anything, has changed in their lifetimes? Manuel responded quickly.

“The shrimp industry began fishing in our hometown when I was quite young, when I first began fishing. Back then you could fish directly from the shore and there were many, many species. As shrimping increased, the species decreased. The shrimp boats drag at night and have small mesh nets that take everything with them — clams, turtles, guitar sharks, starfish, octopus, snails, small fish — everything is taken out and thrown dead overboard the next day, this continues on and on and on, night after night. A lot of the bycatch fish are juveniles and haven’t even made it to breeding size, this affects the reproduction of the species immensely. Our fish stocks have halved as a result, and many species have disappeared.” The shrimp industry has the world’s worst bycatch trackrecord, for every 1 pound of shrimp caught six pounds of bycatch are thrown out.

Wendy and Manuel have witnessed the emptying of the oceans. Their testimony reminds me of a very gut-wrenching quote by marine biologist Dr. Sylvia Earle. In a recent interview she was asked where the best diving in the world was? “Everywhere in 1970,” she replied. Essentially, before industrial fishing. Mario also spoke of their work.

“Wendy and Manuel are trying to spread the correct information and organise the various communities under one leadership. Hopefully this solves the confusion about what rules are implemented under a Biosphere Reserve and how they can benefit from it. Ultimately, the most important thing to consolidate a marine protected area is the process of acceptance and governance of the community that lives in it, this is what ensures that the protected area will be effective tomorrow. The management of the natural area is that the community understands it, manages it, knows it, and participates in its design. 

“For example, a big problem is the issue of surveillance. It is impossible for governments to put a policeman in each tree to prevent illegal fishing, it is impossible for each fishing gear to have an inspector. What has to be done is to strengthen the community in such a way that they participate in the surveillance processes and the authority simply reacts to illegalities. But persecuting constantly is impossible. In other words, the sea is so extensive that it is economically unfeasible, these community vigilance committees must be formed once they are organised, once the leadership is built.”

I asked Mario what else do you need to do for the Biosphere Reserve Dos Mares to be implemented?

“There is a process to give birth to a reserve. You first have to carry out and submit a justifying study that is required by law. That is done by CONANP together with the source, which is Beta Diversidad in this case. And that study, because it contains all the legal, technical, ecological, biological, economic, social, tourist information, etcetera, is very complex. We have submitted it to the consideration of the new Commissioner for his team to review, and a large number of institutions can participate in it or oppose it, especially scientists. 

“When you decree a reserve or a natural protected area, normally your natural enemy is the fishing industry and the fishing authority. However, in this case, we have a good number of NGOs that are either funded by the fishing industry or that work to preserve their interests.  They are dedicated to “conservation”… but through the resources and interests of the fishing industry… There are scientists who work for the fishing industry and there are scientists who work for conservation. Those who work for conservation have less recognition because the industry has invested a lot more in its scientists and has placed them so that they can directly influence fishing policy instruments: laws, regulations. So now we need to make sure that the study is fully supported by the right interests and that dubious scientists are revealed.”

Porfiria Gomez finishes Mario’s train of thought as he is interrupted by a phone call. Porfiria works for Orgcas, another NGO kickstarted by Mario. Orgcas is operated by a group of 14 women that transition local shark fishing communities into tourist operators. Orgcas coordinated the meeting between Wendy and the Agua Amarga community.

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“We started the process five years ago, when Mexico’s new President Lopez Obrador arrived, he is the one who will take the final decision. However, the Minister of the Environment has already changed three times, as well as the Commissioner, so every time these important changes happen, we have to start the legal procedures all over again. At the same time, we are pursuing all the work with the communities and establishing the scientific review, therefore this year is very important, because next year we have elections again and we can’t risk another change in leadership. We need to ensure that the Biosphere Reserve is fully supported within the next eight months.”

If approved, the Biosphere Reserve Dos Mares would bring Mexico to its goal of protecting 30 percent of its oceans by 2030, while also supporting local fishing communities. For decades Mario and his team have been navigating a sea of vested economic and political interests within a country crippled by corruption and complex bureaucracy. Their dedication, courage and hard work brings me hope for future MPAs, returning the oceans to their former glory while creating a blueprint that can be applied worldwide.

The post Making a Marine Biosphere appeared first on eco-nnect.

“I studied to be a technician to solve technical issues, like changing the type of fishing nets that were being used… Nobody had taught me how to understand a culture, how to engage with the community, how to appreciate how they feel and how they live, not just by understanding their language, but all of their expressions. This realization made me grow a lot and see conservation work in an entirely different light.”

I met Alejandro Robles on a sunny afternoon in his countryside home in San Bartolo, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Alejandro and his wife Monica grow their own produce there and have built nature cabins for guests. Their home was welcoming and peaceful, a sweet countryside relief nestled within the giant cacti that are so symbolic of Baja. They normally reside in La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur. Baja is known for its marine wildlife and ecosystems, it’s often described as an “open air aquarium”.

Alejandro has been working in ocean conservation his entire life. At the tender age of 26 he was on the scientific boat that had one of the first sightings of the vaquita marina in the wild —– the elusive endangered and tiny porpoise that is endemic to the Sea of Cortez. 

“The totoaba is a huge endemic fish in danger of extinction and looking for it I ran into the vaquitas. So, I was part of a marine mammal scientific team and I collected the first fresh specimens of the vaquitas back in 1985. Until then the vaquita was virtually unknown, they only knew it existed because of a skull that had been found in 1955, upon which the new species was classified in 1958.”

He then focused on the sustainable management of fisheries, administering the sardine and anchovy fisheries at the national level in Mexico — the basis of the ocean’s food system.

“I was in charge of negotiating the first sardine fishing bans and to stop all juvenile fish catches. That’s when Conservation International arrived in the region and hired me in ‘88 to run The Sea of Cortez program. They were interested in birds and in the islands of the Gulf and sardines were their main food source and I understood what was happening with sardines. Eventually I became their Mexico director working on the protection of the Lacandon tropical rainforest in Chiapas and also in Oaxaca.”

A few years after that, in 2000, Alejandro became Vice President for Mexico and Central America Conservation International (CI) based in their Washington DC headquarters.

“After some years as Vice President of CI in the US, I moved to to San Diego to start Noreste Sustentable (NOS), and in 2008 my wife and I decided to move back to Mexico. We chose to settle in La Paz in Baja California.”

Upon his return to Mexico, Alejandro founded Noreste Sustentable (NOS), an NGO that sought to combat illegal fishing and to protect the vaquita marina.

“In the north of the Gulf, in the towns of Santa Clara and San Felipe, the vaquita was disappearing. So, we started working with the national government to establish a vaquita refuge inside the already established marine reserve and to make certain gill nets illegal. However, I eventually realized that the technical solutions don’t really work if the social fabric of the community is sick. The towns in the north were rampant with drugs, trafficking and illegal fishing.  But as environmental NGOs we are not really able to deal with social issues, so we just pretended they didn’t exist and kept lobbying the government to create a marine reserve, but in truth, the society needed help.

“Whilst we were working to create a marine area in the north we also established a citizen watch group against illegal fishing in La Paz. We would show up to the illegal boats and essentially do the police’s work. One day the Marine Admiral noticed our work and told us to call him next time we saw illegal shrimp boats, he promised to send help and intercept the boats. So we did, and he kept his promise. The shrimp boat didn’t even have any licenses and the next day news traveled fast around the bay that illegal shrimping wasn’t tolerated any longer. The illegal shrimp fishing boats stopped after that. And once they stopped we began looking into the local fishermen who had a tendency to fish with harpoons at night, an illegal method of fishing.”

When Alejandro had relocated to La Paz, he leased the NOS office space in an area known as el Manglito, a notoriously difficult community, one of the most violent in La Paz. He found it hard to assimilate into the community, so a neighbour advised him to hire Alicia, a loved local that knew everyone in the neighborhood.

“One day, Alicia was in the office. It was quite funny looking back on it, because we were checking night photographs from the illegal fishing observatory. The photos revealed faces despite the darkness. So we’re all checking the images when Alicia walks in and asks: ‘What is this? Why did you take these photographs?’ I replied, ‘we’re just checking photos of fishermen fishing illegally.’ ‘But it’s my cousin! What does this NGO do exactly?’ I responded that ‘we try to stop illegal fishing.’ Alicia then shouted ‘but everyone in this neighborhood is involved in illegal fishing!’. Unknowingly I had rented an office in the heart of La Paz’s illegal fishing community. For a year we remained in this very tense situation, where the local community didn’t want anything to do with us.

“Then something interesting happened, Alicia’s 20 year old son Omar asked me to help him with his football team. Of course I agreed and told the team I would help if they agreed to fair play rules and to give back to the community in some way or another. They agreed to the conditions and I helped them buy their kits and set up team rules. At the same time my wife and I kept insisting on finding a way to connect with the community, nobody would even say hello back to us. But then, one day, walking around the area we started picking up litter that was on the streets, and everyone started to notice. Without saying anything, they started picking up trash too and giving it to us when we walked by, and this is how our first interactions began. People would show up and say ‘we noticed you like picking up trash, so we collected some for you’. Then, Cano, the captain of the football team came up to me and said ‘you helped us, now we want to help. We want to organize a neighborhood clean up.’ 

Morre than 50 people showed up to that first clean up. They collected 20 tonnes of garbage and even turned a landfill into a football field. 

“This day changed the energy completely. Eventually, we cleaned up the whole neighborhood, organising six clean up days. Once the garbage was dealt with, the group started washing off the graffitis from the walls too. It was almost as though the process had to start on land first to eventually reach the shores. 

“Then about a year later, in 2010, we placed the first denunciations of two local illegal fishermen Huber and Guillermo… But by then some people in the community trusted us and encouraged Guillermo and Hubert to come talk to us. So the first discussions began. Back then I was figuring out how to engage in a healthy dialogue to create a shared vision. You know it’s difficult because we didn’t really know how to achieve that dialogue.” 

By 2011, Guillermo and Hubert, along with NOS, led the project to recuperate the Catarina clam in the La Paz inlet. The Catarina clam became functionally extinct in the area and had to be brought over from neighbouring coastal lagoons.

“Together, we brought the Catarina clam from Concepcion bay and reproduced them in a lab. That year we planted the first 25,000 clams. Months after we planted them, once they had reached their commercial size, they were all stolen. The theft was in defiance to the project, because they were just thrown away. Interestingly, this really peeved off the local community. Everyone was shocked. ‘This can’t be possible, that was a good project,’ they’d say in the streets.

After the theft, six more fishermen joined Guillermo and Hubert. 

“‘We want to join the project too,’ they said. Within a year, instead of 25,000 clams they planted over 500,000, however, again the clams were stolen, but each time there was a robbery, the community would respond more aggressively and more people would want to get involved.”

Five days after meeting Alejandro, I drove to La Paz to meet Hubert at the NOS offices in el Manglito. Huber proudly introduced himself as an ex-illegal fisherman and gave me a wonderful tour of the regenerated area aboard his panga (a traditional Mexican fishing boat). Throughout the tour, Huber opened up about his journey. I could feel his pride and joy as he explained the arduous underwater work.

“For years the community overfished, and the area became overexploited. When my father fished he could take out 40kg of Catarina clams in an hour, whereas I would spend all day trying to find only 1kg. Eventually we tried to look for work elsewhere, going around the whole of Baja fishing illegally. We would be chased by the local coast guards, and we felt like the worst delinquents in the world, but all we really wanted was to survive. Nobody was teaching us how to fish in the best possible way, that was all we knew. We would harpoon at night and the citizen watch group would chase us away. Now the same people that chased us are our friends.

“Initially we thought NOS was out to fuck us. But eventually we realised they weren’t as bad as we thought. We didn’t trust Alejandro at all at the beginning, and he didn’t trust us either, but then the idea was born to recuperate the clams in the bay, and manage it well, and take care of them. So NOS helped us get all of the permits and do an overview of the restoration area. Together we regenerated the whole of the Ensenada area. A few years after the project began, even the turtles and the dolphins came back to the bay.”

The Bay of La Paz is a heavily trafficked shipping area where most of Baja’s resources arrive. La Paz also has a big thermoelectric plant. So it was a truly refreshing experience to witness clean waters, healthy mangroves and plenty of seabirds just a five minute panga ride from the city’s port. 

“In 2012, working with NOS, we agreed to stop fishing the pen shell clam in the bay for some years. By 2015, instead of 40,000 clams that we planted, we had 5 million. But then an invasive sponge-like species killed most of our pen shells. That taught us to diversify. So we requested permits to plant several species of clams, establish a sustainable aquaculture of oysters, and also regenerate the mangrove. Today we don’t even mind losing 70% of our clams to birds, because a scientific expert told us that it means that the ecosystem is healthy.”

The Bay of La Paz was dredged in the 1980s to enable ships to dock at the port. The dredging, along with overfishing, caused the slow demise of La Paz’s marine ecosystem, leading fishermen to take desperate measures to feed their families. Today, Huber and Guillermo teach other fishermen in Mexico how to relocate and regenerate clam populations. Recently, Huber’s daughter joined the project, offering tours of the regenerated mangroves as part of a sustainable tourism initiative. 

When speaking with Alejandro, he explained the simple act that inspired this transformation. 

“You know, what was most powerful for me to witness was to see how the simple changing of a gesture, one that was used to taking from the ocean, instead one day that same hand turned around, and instead of taking gave back to the ocean, restoring an entire ecosystem. I think this was very powerful for the fishers to experience.” 

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Alejandro’s work with NOS and the Manglito fishing community shows that your worst enemies can turn into your fiercest allies when you listen to their problems with compassion. 

“My entire career has been devoted to marine conservation, and my forte has been fisheries management. However, I now know that the key to success is not fixing technical fishing issues but healing community problems.”  

The Manglito community was suffering: dependent on fishing for generations, most turned to illegal methods out of desperation, as fish stocks worldwide collapsed due to commercial overfishing. Alejandro managed to win the communities’ love and respect through small acts of compassion, slowly paving the way to a successful collaboration that both regenerated the entire bay and provided a better economic alternative for the fishers who call it home.

Isabella Cavalletti is a storyteller and co-founded eco-nnect.

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