HOW OVERFISHING HIJACKED MEXICO'S SECOND LARGEST INDUSTRY

WHITE GOLD FEVER

Teacapán, a small fishing village one hundred miles south of Mazatlan, became known as a town blessed with a fortune under the sea when a fisherman made a discovery that would change his life and the lives of everyone he knew.

Gulf of California

It was 2007 and fishing, at one time the main industry for Teacapán, had long since peaked. Years of overfishing had depleted the local supply of fish. The town's fishermen were struggling to provide for their families. Businesses failed as the local economy dried up. That's when Belen Delgado, a local fisherman, caught his first glimpse of the callo de hacha, a large black scallop with a tender white interior, one of the most prized species in the Gulf of California.

CALLO DE HACHA

Belen Delgado (Photo Cathy Brundage)

What was to come was unexpected, and fast. He'd heard a shrimp boat had snared and netted a callo de hacha. He knew this meant that a massive bank of the valuable shellfish sat just off the town's shore. A discovery like that could revitalize Teacapán and allow it to prosper. But reaching the ocean floor was only the first challenge. If there was a treasure below, he would have to protect it.

Native to the Sea of Cortez, callo de hacha, named for its hatchet-looking large black shell, is a rare species of scallop. Its tender white inside, the size of a silver dollar, is prized throughout Mexico, Delgado said in an interview with "Snap Judgment." At the time, he wagered the net worth of these shellfish was worth millions of US dollars.

He'd heard the same about the callo from another fisherman, a shrimper, who had begun to find one or two in his nets. Callo de hacha can live in shallow and deep waters. By what he heard fellow fishermen friends were bringing in, he figured there had to be mountains of it below, some as far as 70 feet under the surface. But the locals couldn't net that; they'd have to dive for it.

Callo de hacha (Photo Cathy Brundage)

DIVING FOR DOLLARS

Delgado called a Baja diver who fished for mollusks and asked him to come to Teacapán. After doing a deep dive, he surfaced and told Delgado that he was sitting on a gold mine. Everywhere he stepped there was callo de hacha. It was a massive colony of shell fish—30 miles long and a mile wide—worth millions.

Belen met with his local fishermen friends in secret. They hid their immediate catches in large coolers. He explained to the others that they had to save and protect what they had. He would drive to Mazatlan and speak to the director at the Federal Fishing Authorities Department to see how they could preserve their find. 

The director asked what he wanted. "To not let it get out of control," he explained. "To keep it for our local fishermen—to give them permits—but to also have quotas."

Belen Delgado was not your ordinary fisherman. He was also a biologist. Born the youngest of nine, he was the only one in his family to go to college where he studied fish biology. Through his studies he learned the importance of protecting the fish population where one lives and how to teach others to protect their resources.

Pangas in Teacapán

DWINDLING RESOURCES

He well remembered how red snapper in their local waters used to be five feet long and there were so many fish it seemed the ocean was boiling. But the catch lately for all of them had been lackluster. If the Baja diver was right, their waters sat directly above a mother lode of the most expensive seafood one could catch in Mexico. Callo is a true delicacy, its white tender meat, known to be the finest that could be found. But in 2007, fishing boats sat unused in the estuary of Teacapán, a once thriving ecosystem. Overfishing and chemical runoff from nearby farms had destroyed it and his local friends were forced to fish out in the open ocean, more dangerous and more costly. 

Delgado knew that Mexico's long coastline with a fishing fleet involving over 100,000 small vessels known as pangas made enforcement on the seas and on the land that served as the launching places a challenge. Illegal fishing was rampant.

OCEANA STEPS IN

Oceana, an international organization that focuses on achieving change on ocean policies, states Mexico struggles with sky-high rates of illegal and undocumented fishing. And according to Sea Around Us, a British Columbia research initiative, every pound of officially reported fish is shadowed by a second, illegally caught pound, meaning the country's true fish catch was double from what was officially recorded. Between 45 and a staggering 90 percent of official fish production in Mexico could go undocumented.

Oceana's study showed that Cancun's waters, part of the first independent audit of Mexico's fisheries, was not alone in hiding a troubling secret. Scientists have nearly zero idea on how the populations of fish like grouper and bluefin tuna are doing there. Oceana's Mexico team released a report in June 2019 that showed severe lack of reliable and publicly available data on the health of Mexico's seafood stocks, making it impossible to manage the country's fisheries. This jeopardizes food security for coastal communities and risks the livelihoods of the one million people who work in the seafood sector.

Mexican Red Grouper 

The report continues that most of Mexico's fisheries are in bad shape, with 17 percent overfished or depleted and 63 percent not able to withstand any additional fishing pressure. The audit pulled these findings from existing government statistics, meaning that the actual state of the fisheries could in fact be even worse. Of the 83 fisheries with available government data, only four percent have verifiable science backing official conclusions on metrics of fish abundance and annual catch.

DATA COLLECTION

Even though Mexico has been a top fishing country for decades, the government only started collecting fisheries data in 2000. Unfortunately, often the data collected is ignored. Since 2000, the government has known certain species are overfished but they have chosen to ignore it and not rebuild these valuable fisheries.

After becoming aware of the gold mine Teacapán was sitting on and with his knowledge of how Mexico works, Belen Delgado at first told no one. But slowly, word got out and hundreds of boats began fishing for the callo. 

Even though he said he knew it would not have a happy ending, he decided to hire divers and go for it. But before that, he tried to talk his friends into fishing just one hundred pounds a day.

NO STINKIN' QUOTAS

"We don't have to destroy ourselves," he told them. "We can have one hundred pounds as a quota."

He decided to set an example and rather than send out all four of his fishing boats, he only sent out two a day.

By this time researchers had come to view the colony of callo and told Delgado and the other fishermen, if taken care of, it could potentially last ten years. But at the rate things were going,  Delgado knew it wouldn't last half of that.

Teacapán fisherman 

His friends insisted there was money to be made. Delgado pushed back and said if we don't limit our catch, we'll flood the market. By fishing only one hundred pounds per boat, we'll get a higher price for longer. He told them he knew of other places in Mexico where they limited and set quotas to protect the fish populations. 

Most of the locals said why not fish what we can? But before fishing authorities could do anything, there were hundreds of boats in the water bringing in more than one hundred pounds of callo each per day. People who had been making ten dollars a day were now making hundreds, selling on the black market up and down the Pacific coast.

Soon fishing boats were coming in from as far away as Mazatlan; it was mayhem. TV reporters showed up to detail the news of this "cocaine of the sea."

PIRATES

"There were three hundred ships in the water," Delgado said. "Men were having fist fights. And then came the pirates who would launch boats in the middle of the night, coming from miles away, then speed off in the darkness with their catch."

At first his local friends said there's plenty for everyone. But they didn't understand that if they alone fished, they could keep the price steady. Outsiders undercut the cost of callo. Divers had to dive deeper, and then tragedy struck. A local diver got the bends. With no hyperbolic chamber in town, Delgado drove the boy to a nearby town that had the chamber and he made it. But other divers were not so lucky. Eventually seven divers died. 

Teacapán fishing boats (Openocean.org)

A CAUTIONARY TALE

"We were fished out within a year and a half," Delgado said.

The fishermen had tossed so many callo shells over the sides of their boats, that it poisoned the water, killing off any cayo left. Fishing in Teacapán is again non-existent.

Delgado is retired now, but occasionally takes his boat out to where they fished for it 15 years ago. 

"Could it happen again?" he was asked. 

"By now, yes. Some may come back, but not as big."

NOT AN UNCOMMON CRIME

Like elsewhere in the world, states the Brookings Institute, illegal fishing threatens the productivity of fisheries and the economic viability of that sector, including marine biodiversity and food security.

Just like other illegal economies such as drugs, the article continues, Mexico's illegal fishing involves rings that smuggle the poached species to distant markets such as China. It also involves poor local fishermen who illegally harvest marine resources. Not unlike drugs, it sets off conflicts between local communities and businesses and with Mexico's regulatory and enforcement authorities. Though not on the scale of the violence associated with Mexican drug markets, it still creates a wrinkle in the flow of the economic system. And like drugs, significant trans-shipment of fish contraband takes place through the United States.

As with all else, we live in an inter-connected world, sharing not only air but oceans and the commerce associated with them. We need to respect not only the laws of the oceans, the diversity that lives within it, by following the laws of both nature and the courts that try to govern our natural resources, and work together—while we still have nature's bountiful resources at our disposal. 

If you enjoyed this post, check out Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

Cover photo: Fisherman with net by GringoNomadinTeacapán