Fish caught illegally in Mexico could end up in U.S.
http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=2044554
July 19, 2004
Seafood caught in Mexico with fishing techniques that are restricted or illegal in the United States still ends up on our dinner plates.
Tens of thousands of fishermen living along the shores of the Sea of Cortez depend on it for a living.
Loosely enforced laws allow overfishing of both quantity and species in an unsustainable fashion that's dealing a devastating blow to an underwater
population, according to scientists.
For generations, fishermen have been taking fish faster than Mother Nature can replenish them, said Carlos Villavicencio, a biologist who specializes
in sharks at the Autonomous University of Baja California South in La Paz.
At the heart of the fishing controversy is a regulation called the shark norma. The Mexican regulation allows fishermen who say they're fishing for
shark to fish within 50 miles of the fragile coastal zone with gill nets and longlines laced with hundreds of hooks.
Gill nets have been banned or are tightly regulated in the United States, and longlines recently were banned in California. Longlines and gill nets
set for shark also catch swordfish, dorado, dolphins, turtles, sea lions and seabirds.
According to the law, fishermen may keep anything they catch on those longlines or in the nets, except for protected species such as turtles.
Some of the incidental catch is more valuable than sharks, which are becoming more difficult to find, said Carlos Villavicencio, a biologist who
specializes in sharks at the Autonomous University of Baja California South in La Paz.
He estimates the number of sharks in the sea is at the lowest level ever because so many have been hooked for their meat or fins.
Fishermen use the shark permits to catch such species as dorado, which are not supposed to be fished commercially, Villavicencio said.
About 9 million pounds of swordfish were shipped to the United States between 1999 and 2003, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dorado,
also known as mahi-mahi, is not supposed to be commercially fished, but it's allowed as incidental catch with the shark permit. More than 14,330
pounds of mahi-mahi have been imported from Mexico so far this year, according to the National Marine Fisheries' Web site.
Because determining where fish come from is no easy task, there's little the American consumer can do to encourage or support more sustainable
practices in the sea, also known as the Gulf of California. Federal regulations going into effect later this year will require that the country of
origin be printed on packaged fish in the United States.
Fish caught in Mexico with techniques banned in the United States, such as unregulated gill nets, are prohibited from import under the Marine Mammal
Protection Act, said Brendan Cummings, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
But those fish still end up on U.S. dinner plates.
"As U.S. fisheries improve their technologies, other countries are supposed to follow suit. If not, we are supposed to ban their imports," Cummings
said.
Though Mexico's laws governing the fishing industry may be more lax than those in the United States, the real problem, law enforcement officials say,
is that they don't have enough resources to enforce the laws on the books.
Villavicencio estimated the shark population at just 10 percent of what it was 50 years ago.
Tucsonan John Brakey is a self-described "assassin of the ocean" who made a living selling boat motors to the fishermen he's now trying to stop.
Today, he is the executive director of Amigos del Mar de Cortes/Friends of the Sea of Cortez, a binational, nonprofit organization of fishermen,
business owners and scientists.
"I was part of the problem," Brakey said. "I thought the sea was endless."
Most of the 2,000 motors Brakey sold in the 1990s propelled boats using the same fishing techniques _ gill nets and longlines _ Brakey now fights.
In 2003, Brakey closed his three seashore motor shops and made the Amigos del Mar his priority.
Captain Jesus Bonilla can't enforce the law adequately with the available resources, he said. Bonilla is the inspections coordinator in the state of
Sinaloa for CONAPESCA, Mexico's fishing regulatory agency.
He simply can't keep up with thousands of fishermen when he has just four 200-horsepower boats.
Although the Mexican navy lends a hand with inspections, Bonilla needs more, bigger and faster boats to do the job right, he said.
But Mexican fishermen such as Felicardo Felix and Americans such as Brakey said the regulatory agency is prone to corruption.
"Here in Mexico, with money, you can make the dog dance," Felix said.
Brakey and the Amigos del Mar want to help law enforcement. Some of them have volunteered their boats for missions.
Brakey's Amigos del Mar have a plan that he said can bring millions of dollars to the sea for law enforcement.
He suggested the Mexican government sell fishing permits online and keep the money in a trust to be distributed to law enforcement in the states
surrounding the sea, rather than sending the money to the Mexican federal government, as is current practice.
Raul Villasenor is a regulations director in Sinaloa for CONAPESCA. He said the $60 to $650 fee per permit goes straight to the federal government,
and he's not sure how much of it comes back to his agency.
Brakey hopes his attempts to unsnarl the red tape will have a long-lasting impact.
The Amigos del Mar hope to spur enough change in fishing regulations to preserve fish for future generations of commercial fishermen, tourists and
sport fishermen.
"My job at the Amigos is to bring people together," Brakey said.
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