It has been two hours for the reason that divers left the coast behind. As they attain their designated GPS factors within the Gulf of Mexico, their boats’ engines go from roaring to whispering. In pairs, they enter the Celestún Fishing Refuge Zone, one of many largest in Mexico. Their ritual is absolute: placed on fins, regulate vests and hoses, clear visors, and cargo oxygen tanks and weights. For the following jiffy, their lives depend upon having rigorously ready their dives to this place of hope.
They’re right here looking for to revive fisheries in decline or on the breaking point. This refuge, a no-catch zone established in 2019, covers 324 sq. kilometers and is monitored by the Yucatán Coast Submarine Monitoring Group Group, a gaggle of neighborhood divers and fishers, who’re supported by personnel from the Mexican Institute for Analysis in Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture (IMIPAS) and the civil affiliation the Group and Biodiversity (COBI). Their methodology mixes native data with scientific rigor.
The issue they face is a world one: Overfishing and environmental degradation are destroying the biodiversity of the oceans, with many nations missing the desire or assets to fight the issue. In 2024, as sea-surface temperatures broke all-time information, the Worldwide Fund for Nature’s Residing Planet report confirmed that, over the previous 50 years, marine populations worldwide have declined in dimension by 56 p.c. Over a 3rd of present marine populations are overfished.
In Mexico, greater than 700 marine species are fished in 83 fisheries, which assist 200,000 Mexican households. Evaluation of Mexico’s Nationwide Fishing Constitution by IMIPAS signifies that 17 p.c of the nation’s fisheries are deteriorated, 62 p.c are being exploited at their most sustainable degree, and 15 p.c haven’t any info on their state. When the conservation nonprofit Oceana analyzed the identical information, it discovered that 34 p.c of Mexico’s fisheries are in “poor condition,” says to Esteban García Peña, Oceana’s coordinator of research and public policy.
Part of the problem is that, under Mexican law, no one is obligated to look after the health of the country’s fisheries; Mexico’s General Fisheries Law doesn’t obligate the government to take on this responsibility. Oceana has petitioned to change this, and in the face of legislative disinterest, even filed an injunction in 2021 against the Congress of the Union, alleging violations of human rights, such as access to a healthy environment and food. This inspired a proposal to revive Mexico’s deteriorated fishing zones, only for it not to be analyzed or approved by Congress, and the project was frozen.
Confronted with this uncertainty, communities have taken issues into their very own arms. Though the federal government isn’t obliged to guard and revive the nation’s fisheries, folks can request for it arrange refuge zones to preserve and repopulate marine ecosystems. And so as we speak, there are refuges in Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo, and Campeche, totaling greater than 2 million hectares and benefiting, straight or not directly, 130 species.
“When the first proposal was put forward, it seemed crazy,” says Alicia Poot, an IMIPAS researcher and head of the Regional Heart for Aquaculture and Fisheries Analysis in Yucalpetén. “Some people think it’s closing the sea, but it’s not. It is working an area in a sustainable way, with community oversight.”
The Limits of Abundance
The day earlier than the monitoring begins, the Celestún crew gathers below a big palapa. Jacobo Caamal, COBI’s scientific diving professional, evaluations the plan for the following few days. He jokingly offers sensible recommendation, utilizing coconuts to indicate learn how to measure sea cucumbers and sea snails.
They speak about sea cucumbers as a result of, though it’s not a part of Mexican gastronomy, its fishing has introduced numerous revenue to this coast. Within the Chinese language market these creatures can fetch greater than $150 per plate. The hype over the echinoderm has pushed practices which are dangerous to the ecosystem and to the fishermen’s well being, similar to diving utilizing a hookah, a makeshift diving machine that runs on gasoline and pumps oxygen down a tube to divers under the floor. Sanitary towels typically stand in as an oil filter, whereas mint tablets are taken to mitigate the style of fuel. In Celestún, no one denies the danger of diving with this machine. Many know somebody who has had an accident or died from decompression.
Till 2012, this space had cucumbers in abundance, however violation of its closed seasons introduced the species to the brink of extinction. Divers began going deeper and deeper to hunt them. The state of affairs turned untenable. Then, a gaggle of fishermen requested IMIPAS researchers for assist to determine an space the place the ocean might have an opportunity to recuperate.
