Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park: a success story and model for Mexican conservation

At the southeastern tip of Baja California, along a dusty coastal dirt is located the small town of Cabo Pulmo. East of the popular and sometimes wild Cabo San Lucas, Cabo Plumo has a success story of its own: the Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park.

At 27 square miles, the Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park is small; tiny when compared to some of the expansive marine parks or sanctuaries established in the South Pacific and elsewhere. But it is a great example of what can occur when local citizens and conservation organizations come together to re-orient the local economy to support the park.

According to Octavio Aburto Oropeza, a post-doctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, populations of groupers, sharks, and other top predators have begun to flourish once again, after being heavily depleted by the commercial fishing and sportfishing. The park was established in 1995 and in the succeeding years, the overall biomass has increased dramatically. From 1999 to 2009, it saw a 463% improvement. And apex predators like large groupers, tiger sharks, bull sharks, and other reef-dwelling shark species have skyrocketed by over 1,000 percent.

North of the marine park, in the Gulf of California, there are areas that show a definite decline in the number of fish and the overall health of the reef ecosystems, and that is due primarily to overfishing by commercial operations or even local fishermen. Also, a considerable amount of illegal fishing of protected species takes place in the Gulf which has contributed to a not so stellar conservation image for Mexico. Because of this, the Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park serves as a model for the Mexican government to duplicate throughout the Gulf.

However, it wasn't an easy transition for the locals. Having restricted or "no-take" zones initially met with some resistance and there certainly was some economic adjustments that needed to be made. But over time, the shift from commercial fishing activities to tourism and diving successfully took place, as evidenced by the development of several resorts, scuba diving/snorkeling outfitters, and ecotourism operations.

"It's a very good example of how many benefits can be produced by coastal communities once you pick an area and leave it to that point that the recovery ... produces other benefits," said Aburto.

Aburto has recently been studying the return of the Gulf Grouper within the park; the fish reaching sizes twice that (up to 4 feet) of those caught outside of the park. He will soon be turning his focus on whether or not the positive effects of the park are spilling out beyond its borders. In California, with its system of MPAs (marine protected areas), researchers have seen fish populations increase outside of the MPAs' boundaries (boundaries that are totally unknown to the fish themselves). This is one of the benefits that many fishermen, who initially were MPA opponents, have come to realize. Soon, there will be a complete chain of MPAs along the California coast and it is hoped that the spillover effect will help to boost fish populations over a much wider area.

This is something that Octavio Aburto Oropeza would like to see happen in Mexico, throughout the Gulf of California and beyond. "This is very important to show that if we create bigger areas, and maintain or protect them for all these years, the benefits will be huge."

The Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park is a prime example of what can happen when we preserve rather than plunder our ocean resources. Nature has a remarkable resiliency, an ability to recover - if given the chance. There's a lesson to be learned here.

Learn more about the Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park.
Read a Baja Life Magazine article about Cabo Pulmo.
Source: North County Times.

The Vaquita: Mexico's diminutive porpoise at risk of extinction

From the large and majestic humpback whale, mentioned in yesterday's post, we can travel to the other end of scale: the rare and diminutive Vaquita. Reaching a mere 5 feet in length, the vaquita is a member of the porpoise family and is only found in the northern end of the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California). And at a scientific meeting of the International Whaling Commission being held in Agadir, Morocco, the findings of a 2008 population study show that there are only approximately 250 vaquitas alive today. As disturbing as that low number may seem, it is even more disconcerting when compared to a 1997 population study that estimated the population to be 567 - a decrease of 55% in just one decade.

The vaquita is similar to other small porpoise species that inhabit deltas and river outlets (one such species in China was considered extinct by 2007). Probably attracted to the shallows of the Sea of Cortez near the mouth of the Colorado River, the vaquita's habitat was impacted by the damming of the river in the U.S.; but researchers do not believe this has been a detriment to the vaquita. What appears to be the primary cause for the vaquita's decline is its tendency to get caught in the gill nets of local fishermen - a tragic victim of bycatch.

The 2008 population study represents the combined efforts of both Mexican and U.S. research groups with additional government support. To conduct the study required an elaborate high-tech version of a common biodiversity technique: to determine basic biodiversity, a transect is used to define an area and then sealife is counted within that area. Doing that several times over a wider area, estimates can then be extrapolated. For the vaquita population, several vessels were used to make large surface transects within which visual sightings and results from hydrophones (which picked up the distinctive clicking sounds made by the vaquitas) were tallied. From that raw data, the current population of 250 was estimated.

Although their primary range is now within a protected reserve, as of 2005, and includes a ban on the use of gill nets; the vaquitas are still very much at risk from illegal fishing. A lack of resources to provide effective enforcement combined with the economic needs of subsistence-level fishermen continue to put the vaquitas at risk. Plans are being considered to introduce fishing techniques that do not use gill nets, but getting local fishermen to abandon their traditional fishing methods will be challenging.

According to Nature News, "A more immediate challenge is to expand the protected area. 'We need to get all the gill nets out of the water,' says Timothy Ragen, executive director of the Marine Mammal Commission in Bethesda, Maryland. But a broader ban would be a difficult economic and political challenge, pitting the vaquita against the livelihoods of local fishermen."

The unique vaquita is one more cetacean that stands at the brink of extinction - not from industrialized commercial fishing or whaling, but from the needs of local fisherman trying to survive. This is dilemma being played out in many other parts of the world.

Read more in Nature News.