http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1108-06.htm
Published on Saturday,
November 8, 2003 by the San Francisco Chronicle
Conservationists Rally to Save Baja's
Dying Sea of Cortez
Poor Management and Overfishing Corrupt Once-pristine
Waters
by Jill Replogle
Guasimas, Mexico -- Mike McGettigan, an American sportfisherman
and diver, has been drawn to the rugged beauty and marine-rich
waters of the Gulf of California for 30 years.
"I've watched
it go from the richest sea I've ever swam in to the
deadest sea I've ever swam in," said McGettigan, who founded
the
environmental watchdog group Sea Watch in 1994 to help focus
attention on the waters, also known as the Sea of Cortez.
Destructive fishing
practices, poor resource management,
unclear regulations and official corruption have turned him
into a born-again conservationist.
The sea, which has
long enchanted such writers as John Steinbeck
and Edward Abbey, is home to 875 fish species and 30 species
of marine mammals. Nearly half the world's cetaceans, including
whales and porpoises, migrate to the gulf to give birth in
its warm, plankton-rich waters. Baja California towns such
as Cabo San Lucas, La Paz and Loreto thrive on tourists,
many of whom are Californians.
But in recent years,
Mexican commercial fishermen searching
for sailfish, tuna, marlin, billfish and dorado (mahi-mahi)
have decimated marine life with "longlines" that can
stretch
up to 50 miles and hold thousands of baited hooks.
And smaller boats use
gill nets -- large nylon webs that are
banned by the European Union and the United States. Gill nets
are legal in Mexico with a special permit, and longlines are
legal to buy, sell and own but illegal to use.
Overfishing has affected
not only the marine environment
but the local economy -- an estimated 150,000 families earn
their livelihood from the Sea of Cortez. "If it weren't for
the (maquiladora export) factories, there would be no work
for young people because there aren't any fish," said
79-year-old Hilario Amarillas, founder of a Yaqui Indian
fishing cooperative in Guasimas, a village on the gulf's
northeastern coast.
Some critics blame
former President Carlos Salinas,
who deregulated Mexican commercial fishing in 1992
without creating an effective system of licensing and
permits. At least 12,000 unregulated fishing boats ply
the Sea of Cortez, according to federal officials.
Faced with the prospect
of a dying sea, an unlikely
alliance of American conservationists, Mexican marine
biologists, local residents and sport fishermen have
pressured the Mexican government to enforce the nation's
law against unlicensed boats and longlines that entrap
sharks, sea turtles, sea lions, manta rays and porpoises
along with the legal catch. There is no penalty for an
"incidental" catch in Mexican law.
John Brakey, executive
director of the U.S.-Mexico Friends
of the Sea of Cortez, estimates that 6,000 shrimp fishermen
use 13,000 gill nets. Most use small, flat-bottomed boats
called pangas, and only one-third are legally registered,
he says.
Carlos Villavicencia,
a marine biologist at the Autonomous
University of Southern Baja California in La Paz, estimates
that the shark population in the Sea of Cortez has declined
between 70 and 80 percent in the past two decades.
Wallace J. Nichols,
a turtle researcher and co-director
of WILDCOAST, a California-based conservation team, says
some 40,000 turtles are killed annually by nets or poachers.
Moreover, the Vaquita porpoise, which is endemic to the
Gulf of California, has dwindled to less than 600, according
to Lorenzo Rojas, coordinator of Mexico's Conservation
Program at the National Ecology Institute. The world's
smallest porpoise, it is on the World Conservation Union's
most critically endangered list.
Between July and September,
gill nets captured international
headlines after five whales were found trapped at different
locations in the Sea of Cortez. Among them were a mother
sperm whale found by sport fishermen 30 miles from the
tourist town of San Carlos entangled in a net near her
dead calf, which had died from hunger after being unable
to nurse.
American fisherman
Mark Ward heard the cries of the mother
whale and jumped in with just a mask, snorkel and knife
to free her. When he also became entangled in the net
underwater, he tried to saw his leg off until the netting
suddenly unraveled. He swam to safety and saved his leg.
The whale swam off trailing the net.
Jose Alfredo Bahena,
an official for Sonora's National
Commission of Aquaculture and Fishing, says his state
is so strapped for resources that it monitors fishermen
by borrowing their boats. And Luis Fueyo, Mexico's top
official for protection of the marine environment, says
he has only 120 inspectors to patrol Mexico's 6,835 miles
of coastline and more than one million square miles of ocean.
"The Sea of Cortez
is like the wild, wild West," said
Vince Redence, owner of the Sonoran Sport Center in San
Carlos. "You can do anything you want and the odds that
someone will stop you are one in a hundred."
Environmentalists say
corruption makes it difficult
to regulate the fishing industry. They point to official
waivers to catch shark called "experimental permits"
that
allow longlines inside Mexico's 50-mile noncommercial
fishing zone. They say it is a ploy to catch dorado and
billfish and fill the pockets of corrupt officials,
who solicit bribes in exchange for the permits.
Jose Carlos Jimenez,
secretary for the Senate Commission
on Environment, Natural Resources and Fishing, said enforcement
of Mexican law is a question of "political will," adding
that
"personal economic interests by some officials make chaos
and
loose regulation a desirable situation."
"The fishing fleet
places and removes governors," said Villavicencia.
Nevertheless, U.S.
and Mexican conservation groups
say their political allies are increasing. The governor
of Baja California Sur, Leonel Cota, has agreed to create
a joint commission with the federal government to improve
management of Baja's waters. Cota has also offered
subsidized gasoline to fishermen who register their
boats.
And in another move
that has delighted conservationists,
Jeronimo Ramos, the director of the National Commission
of Marine Culture and Fishing (CONAPESCA), was removed
from his post in September. Critics had accused Ramos
of kowtowing to the fishing lobby.
The Sea of Cortez "has
been beaten to death," said
Donald Thomson, professor emeritus at the University
of Arizona Ecological and Evolutionary Biology Department.
"It's still kicking, but it needs a lot of help."
©2003 San Francisco
Chronicle
###
