‘Mermaids’ dive to study and protect Mexican fishing grounds

Esmeralda Albañez used to be afraid of the sea. Just thinking about it would conjure up images of darkness, of how deep and unknown it was to her. Coming from a family of fishers and having grown up on Isla Natividad, in Baja California Sur, Mexico, it was clear that there was a connection between her and the sea surrounding her, but something kept her away from the water. From an early age, she was taught that the sea was not a place for women.

From afar, Albañez watched as other women, mainly biologists, went diving near the island. Deep down, she wanted to escape her domestic chores — at least for a moment — and be one of them. That’s why one invitation was all she needed to overcome her fears. Encouraged by a friend, she signed up for a diving class, and now, every time Albañez puts on her wetsuit, the whole world seems different to her.

“The first time I saw the colors and the light, the first time I was able to interact with the fish, I fell in love with the sea,” Albañez says. “Soon after, they told us that we could train to carry out monitoring with a group of men who had already been working on it since 2006. I didn’t hesitate to sign up.”

In 2011, Albañez trained in scuba diving; three years later, in 2014, she was certified as a fishing refuge monitor, thanks to the NGOs Comunidad y Biodiversidad A.C. (COBI), based in Mexico, and the Reef Check Foundation, based in California.

Today, it is not just Esmeralda Albañez who dives in the waters surrounding Isla Natividad, but also four other women — all homemakers between the ages of 30 and 44 — who help report on the conservation status of the marine reserves and fishing areas. Since 2019, they have been known as the Sirenas de Natividad, or the mermaids of Natividad, an all-female group of citizen-scientist divers.

Their work has supported the fishing cooperative Buzos y Pescadores de la Baja California, to which their husbands, parents and neighbors on the island belong. The cooperative has been working to adapt and be more resilient to climate change impacts, such as tropical storms, marine heat waves, hypoxia events — where oxygen in the water is depleted — and the loss of kelp forests. These underwater forests are home to creatures that are an important part of the community’s diet, such as the abalone (Haliotis corrugata and H. fulgens), which have been dying in droves.

As part of these measures, the fishing cooperative has established volunteer-run marine reserves to encourage the recovery of affected fish stocks and invested in diversifying its economic activities, such as catching other, more resilient species, and in community and participatory science programs.

In early 2024, the cooperative’s combined knowledge and learnings were described in a study in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science led by Stanford University marine ecologist Fiorenza Micheli. The article “highlights the crucial importance of strengthening and supporting rights, governance, capacity, flexibility, learning, and agency for coastal communities to respond to change and sustain their livelihoods and ecosystems in the long run,” the authors write.

The monitoring conducted by the Sirenas de Natividad, in collaboration with their fellow fishers and divers, provided an understanding of how different species responded to events such as hypoxia or heat waves, Micheli says. The Isla Natividad community not only identified the vulnerability or resilience of different species, but also the areas or fishing grounds that provide refuge from climate change.

“The cooperative used this information in different ways; for example, to restock,” Micheli says. “They placed the young of impacted animals in the most stable zones identified as part of the monitoring, as well as considering recovery times after a heat wave or a mass mortality event, so they know how long they need to wait before they can start fishing again.”

The impact of climate change

Albañez describes Isla Natividad as “a very small piece of land.” It is 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) wide and 7 km (about 4 mi) long, and is inhabited by some 500 people who have all been directly or indirectly involved in traditional fishing for around four generations.

According to Mexico’s National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change, Isla Natividad is located 8 km (5 mi) from the mainland on the Baja California Peninsula and is one of 16 islands and islets within the Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve. The reserve is characterized by mountain ranges, plains and coastal areas, lagoons and a strip of shoreline.

Isla Natividad’s ecosystems feature high-productivity kelp forests and their associated species of commercial interest, such as abalone, lobster and finfish. However, Micheli’s study reports that following the El Niño event of 1982-83, abalone populations in Mexico were in a critical condition, and commercial fisheries were on the verge of collapse.

At this pivotal moment, the region’s fishers agreed to help co-manage the resource, and to participate in scientific research with government officials and external scientists, activities that have continued to this day.

In 1997-98, when El Niño hit the area again, this time with hurricane Nora, the cooperative and the community took the events as another opportunity to learn more about extreme climate change and the importance of preventatively safeguarding marine resources. It was at this point that they understood their role as proactive agents capable of mitigating the effects of climate change.

As early as February 2006, the Isla Natividad cooperative voluntarily set aside 8% of its abalone fishing area to create two protected and unfished marine reserves. The aim was to recover the mollusk’s depleted populations while fishers continued their activities elsewhere. Since then, scientific monitoring in the area has been a crucial part of the cooperative’s decision-making.

“The information we have collected during this time has helped the cooperative and other communities to compare the health of a marine reserve, and to see the other side,” meaning they can compare the area with those where fishing does take place, Albañez says. This process has led them, for example, to see that during the high-temperature events that cause mass abalone mortality, the areas that have recovered best have been in the protected reserves.

“Most of the time the fishermen just don’t realize; they just fish and don’t know what condition the seabed is in. We are their eyes,” Albañez says. In fact, fishing permits and authorized harvest quantities are now decided through their joint evaluations with the cooperative. “It is very gratifying to know that what we are doing is useful,” she says.

But reserves and monitoring have not been the community’s only means of building resilience. Micheli says that, faced with the decline of some species, fishers implemented close (or “closed”) season measures to avoid overexploiting resources that were already weakened due to the impact of climate change.

“They have also diversified with species that are more resilient to high temperatures, such as some fish and lobster. Additionally, they have branched out into aquaculture production of abalone and other species,” Micheli says.

Although local actions cannot directly reduce the impact of events such as hypoxia or extreme conditions, which are influenced by larger forces, she says, communities can play a key role in strengthening the local social-ecological system to such events.

“What affects one fishing community will affect a neighboring community tomorrow and eventually end up hurting those in landlocked cities,” Albañez says.

The Sirenas and the future of the island

At the beginning, the Sirenas de Natividad were part of a mixed monitoring team with men, but little by little, the women began to lead the charge, as their teammates combined monitoring with their fishing work, which demanded more time.

Up to now, the Sirenas de Natividad have been focusing on monitoring fishery resources, mainly marine invertebrates, as well as biophysical monitoring of marine reserves.

“When we head out to monitor the area, we follow a 30-by-2-meter [about 98-by-6-foot] transect and count fish. Then, we go back along the transect counting algae and kelp. Next, we go back along the same transect counting invertebrates. And finally, we look at the relief — how the seabed is doing, and what we find in each meter. We might find a snail, sand, gravel or a giant rock,” Albañez says.

She is impressed by what the team has achieved. “We are a group of community women who, even without education, because most of us only finished high school, have been able to contribute to our community and to our husbands’ cooperative,” adds Albañez who, together with her teammates, also participates in environmental education programs and meetings to share learnings with other women who work in fishing-related activities.

Micheli says that what has been happening on Isla Natividad has inspired four other Mexican cooperatives to become interested in conservation activities and establish their own marine reserves.

“The cooperative has always been concerned with caring for the environment,” Albañez says. “As a child, I remember conversations with my father and grandfather where they said they had to protect the environment for future generations. In the past, there were no pension funds, and they said that the only thing they were going to pass on to their children was just that: the cooperative and the sea.”

Now, when Albañez thinks of the sea, she no longer sees darkness. On the contrary, she counts down the days until the annual monitoring and hopes that one day there will no longer be just five women trained, but many more. But for that they need money, she says, because certification and diving equipment are expensive.

Being a sirena, she says, has given her a new identity. “Before, I was very much confined to my home, in my role as a mom and wife. But I deserve to find my identity, to have a job that fulfills me, something I enjoy and can share with other people. This experience is so beautiful, and we want to spread it to all communities, to everyone, so they can get to know the sea and live what we are living. We want them to fall in love with what we are doing.”

Albañez says that the fishermen have to go farther and farther out to catch fish, and that the fish are getting smaller every day. “If we don’t look at the problems that fishing communities like ours are experiencing, we will end up destroying the sea,” she says. “Once this happens, there will be nothing we can do. Now is the time to rescue what we have.”

Banner image: The Sirenas de Natividad, a team of citizen scientist divers. Image by CADS Science Documentary.

Citation:
Micheli, F., Saenz-Arroyo, A., Aalto, E., Beas-Luna, R., Boch, C. A., Cardenas, J. C., … Woodson, C. B. (2024). undefined. Frontiers in Marine Science, 11. doi:10.3389/fmars.2024.1322108

This story was reported by Mongabay’s Latam team and first published here on our Latam site on Jun. 4, 2024.