He was Two hours since the divers left the coast behind. As they reach their designated GPS points in the Gulf of Mexico, the engines of their boats go from roar to whisper. In pairs, they enter the Celestún fishing refuge area, one of the largest in Mexico. Their ritual is absolute: put the fins, adjust vests and pipes, clean visors and load reservoirs and oxygen weights. During the next few minutes, their lives depends on having carefully prepared their dives for this place of hope.
They seek here to restore declining fishing or about to collapse. This refuge, an established area established in 2019Covers 324 square kilometers and is monitored by the community surveillance group for submarines in the Yucatán coast, a group of community divers and fishermen, who are supported by the staff of the Mexican Institute for Research in Sustainable Fishing and Aquaculture (IMIPA) and the Civil Association of the Community and Biodiversity (COBI). Their methodology mixes local knowledge with scientific rigor.
The problem they face is global: overfishing and environmental degradation destroy the biodiversity of oceans, many countries without will or resources to fight against the problem. In 2024, while temperatures on the sea surface broke records of all time, the Global Fund for Nature Living planet The report has shown that, over the past 50 years, the world's marine populations have decreased by 56%. More than a third of the current marine populations are raised.
In Mexico, more than 700 marine species are caught in 83 fisheries, which support 200,000 Mexican families. Mexico analysis National fishing charter By imipas, indicates that 17% of the country's fisheries are deteriorated, 62% are operated at their maximum lasting level and 15% have no information on their condition. When the non -profit organization of conservation OCEANA analyzed the same data, he found that 34% of Mexican peaches are in “poor condition”, said to Esteban García Peña, Oceana coordinator of research and public policies.
Part of the problem is that, under Mexican law, no one is forced to deal with the health of the country's fisheries; The general law of Mexico peaches does not oblige the government to assume this responsibility. Oceana asked to change this and, faced with a legislative disinterest, even filed an injunction in 2021 against the Congress of the Union, alleging human rights violations, such as access to a healthy environment and food. This inspired a proposal for the recovery of the deteriorated fishing areas of Mexico, only so as not to be analyzed or approved by the congress, and the project was frozen.
Faced with this uncertainty, communities have taken matters into their own hands. Although the government is not obliged to protect and relaunch the country's fisheries, people can ask that it set up refuge areas to preserve and repopulate marine ecosystems. And so today, there are shelters in Baja California sur, Quintana Roo and Campeche, totaling more than 2 million hectares and benefiting directly or indirectly, 130 species.
“When the first proposal was put forward, it seemed crazy,” explains Alicia Pot, Imipas researcher and head of the regional research center on aquaculture and fishing in Yucalpén. “Some people think it closes the sea, but that is not the case. He worked for a sustainable way, with community surveillance. ”
The limits of abundance
The day before the start of surveillance, the Celestún team gathers under a large palapa. Jacobo Camal, Cobi's scientific diving expert, reviews the plan for the next few days. It jokes practical advice, using coconuts to show how to measure sea cucumbers and sea snails.
They speak of sea cucumbers because, although it is not part of Mexican gastronomy, his fishing has brought back a lot of profit on this coast. On the Chinese market, these creatures can earn more than $ 150 per plate. Media threshing on echinoderm has resulted in harmful practices for fishermen's ecosystem and health, such as diving using a hugeA makeshift diving machine that works on petrol and pumps oxygen in a tube to divers under the surface. Sanitary towels sometimes arise as an oil filter, while mint tablets are taken to mitigate the taste of gas. In Celestún, no one denies the risk of diving with this machine. Many know someone who has had an accident or who died of decompression.
Until 2012, this area had abundance cucumbers, but the violation of its closed seasons brought the species to the edge of extinction. The divers began to go deeper and deeper to hunt them. The situation has become untenable. Then, a group of fishermen asked Imipas researchers to help establish an area where the sea could have a chance to recover.
