- For 20 years, fishers from the district of Marcona, on Peru’s southern coast, have been recovering populations of red sea urchin, thanks to an alliance with the government.
- According to a monitoring study by the Peruvian Institute of the Sea, there are more urchins in the area where Marcona fishers work than in other areas.
- Part of the success is rooted in the spatial management of coastal areas that the artisanal fishers’ associations are applying; they are pioneers of this practice in the country.
At 8 a.m., 15 divers from the Artisanal Fishers Association Cristóbal Colón meet on Carrizales beach in the Marcona district of Nazca province in southern Peru. They tie a mesh bag to their waist and get into the water. An hour later, they have collected 750 kilograms (1,653 pounds) of red sea urchins. Back on shore, the divers’ wives take the animals, put them in boxes and give them to the middlemen. They remove the urchins’ reproductive systems, or gonads, freeze them and send them to Asia, where a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of this product, used in gourmet dishes, can cost up to $1,000.
The red sea urchin (Loxechinus albus) is one of the most important sea resources that artisanal fishers exploit in Peru. Its extraction area goes from the city of Pisco (south of the capital, Lima) to the country’s southern border and can reach 35 meters (114 feet) of depth. Unlike other artisanal associations, the Cristóbal Colón fishers practice free diving. That means they dive without oxygen tanks; they rely solely on their own capacity to keep air in their lungs at depths of more than 10 meters (32 feet).
Edgar Coqhi Quispe, one of the divers in the association, uses only his diving suit, glasses, fins and a snorkel to do his job. He was 14 when he first went diving. He says his father introduced him to the sea. “Already in the ‘90s, my family was collecting urchins by free diving,” Coqhi says. “At the time, there weren’t so many economic resources and the fishers used their lungs to extract the animals from the sea.”
Today, Coqhi, at age 32, has kept his family’s tradition. He extracts red sea urchin, as well as seaweed, abalone, limpet and octopus using only free diving.
But something has changed over the years. He and the other 35 fishers in the association now work to repopulate the red sea urchin to preserve it and protect the biological balance they lost in the ‘90s due to overexploitation.
Currently, there are 15 fisher associations represented by the Artisanal Fishers Community of Marcona (Copmar). Since 2005, they have been working to recover aquatic systems through a pilot program.
The project comprises 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres) of coastal edge and has the goal of making artisanal fishing sustainable through spatial management: The associations have specific areas for fishing and conserving the urchin via fishing bans, fishing quotas, minimum sizes for extraction, beach surveillance and the use of confinement to encourage reproduction.
Successful conservation strategies
In 1973, when he was 14, Washington Espinoza became a diver. “Already back then people were extracting red sea urchins, but not in big quantities,” he says. “The boom arrived halfway through the ‘80s with the gonad exports.”
Espinoza is now the president of Copmar. He says that between 1991 and 1992, the fishers implemented the first urchin closure. The measure allowed the species to repopulate nine months later. However, after the urchin rebound, “more than 50 shellfish ships from outside of Marcona arrived and started the large-scale predation,” Espinoza says.
After the year 2000, the fishers held meetings with the government to discuss how to work on urchin recovery, he says. “There were many discussions to lead to the creation of a special commission for the recovery of the aquatic ecosystem in 2003,” he says. Two years later, in 2005, with a Supreme Decree, the Peruvian government created the project, called the “Demonstrative pilot program for the recovery of aquatic ecosystems and the sustainable use of their biodiversity.”
This program included government representatives, fisher associations, conservation organizations and the Marcona district government. All of them worked together to find a solution to the decline of the species.
For Espinoza, “the reform of the sea” — as they call the coastal zoning in which each association can fish in only one sector and the harvesting isn’t concentrated in one spot — was the main strategy to recover the species.
“The idea of apportioning the sea appeared in 2002 because the overexploitation of resources due to the large amount of fishers was affecting some areas,” he says. “That’s how Copmar decided in 2003 that each fisher would have 2 hectares [5 acres] of coastal edge.” Currently, each association manages 78-249 hectares (192-615 acres).
In 2006, however, they decided to implement a more drastic measure: a total ban on red sea urchin extraction that lasted until 2015.
When the harvesting resumed, keeping the apportioning of the sea allowed the associations to have the control and surveillance of the beaches necessary to prevent the entrance of illegal fishers. In addition, they established harvest quotas that are divided equally among the fisher associations as well as a minimum harvestable urchin size. According to Rafael Cocchi, president of the Artisanal Fishers Association Cristóbal Colón, the urchin can be harvested only when its shell diameter reaches 7 centimeters (2.7 inches). That’s how the fishers ensure young urchins reach adulthood and can reproduce.
Additionally, each association dedicates 5 hectares (12 acres) of their assigned area to encourage urchin reproduction. They use what’s called the confinement technique, although they do not actually restrain the urchins’ movements: They put a group of individuals together in the same area to improve the chances of successful reproduction. In the 5 hectares, “no fisher is allowed to extract urchins, as they are protected exclusively for the increase of the species,” Cocchi says.
Although there aren’t enough scientific studies to prove confinement works effectively, it has obtained favorable results in this area. The last report by the Peruvian Institute of the Sea, from 2023, on the biological assessment of the red sea urchin population in Marcona, points out that the areas protected by fishers show a higher number of young individuals, small urchins that haven’t reached sexual maturity.
Peru’s Ministry of Production recognized in a 2020 resolution, where it assigned the fishing quota for that year, an increase in captures that “represents greater abundance and availability of the urchin in that area.” The ministry highlights that the fishers’ efforts in San Juan de Marcona, the capital of Marcona district, contributed to this.
Although often economic needs drive people to break fishing bans, the Marcona case has been different, according to biologist Víctor Narro, an expert in benthic species. “Copmar has self-management measures to regulate the urchin catch: respect for the bans, self-surveillance committees, application of sanctions to people who break the ban and others,” he says. “This work allowed the urchin to recover.”
In addition to the 15 Copmar associations that work in the pilot project, there are two other associations in the area south of Marcona that are replicating these techniques. In total, there are 880 fishers respecting the spatial management system and doing surveillance for compliance with extraction quotas and minimum harvestable size limits.
“We are the only organization that has fishing spatial management and the district [government] can manage and invest in fishing because there is a supreme decree that endorses us,” Espinoza says.
“The Marcona fishers and the government have developed a management model that has made it possible to recover the red urchin populations that are key for the local economy and diet,” says Brian Oblitas Gallardo, project coordinator with the marine conservation nonprofit Fondemar. The group provides the Marcona divers with technical assistance, while The Nature Conservancy, in agreement with Copmar, funds the marine spatial management project.
An alternative during the urchin fishing closure: Seaweed
Espinoza says that when the red sea urchin started declining in 1998, fishers tried to find other ways to sustain themselves economically. In 2005, the Ministry of Production allowed the harvest of seaweed above a certain size. The fishers found a solution to the overexploitation of urchins in kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera and Lessonia trabeculata).
The extraction of these brown algae, which are exported to China after being chopped and dried, gave the Marcona fishers an income during the urchin-fishing ban that lasted from 2006 to 2015.
However, as time passed, the fishers realized that cutting the seaweed from the sea bottom would damage the red sea urchin, as the species lives in marine forests.
Espinoza says that by 2006, each boat was taking out a metric ton of seaweed from the sea bottom that could sell for 1,200 soles (around $320). “The seaweed forests were being predated. We didn’t know we were destroying the urchins’ habitat,” he says.
The Ministry of Production established a short ban, from December 2008 to February 2009, and the next month, fishers started collecting the seaweed washed up on the shore, a practice they continue to follow today. According to Espinoza, this technique consists in collecting only what the sea lets go naturally.
“Each fisher can get a monthly income of around 3,000 soles [$800] from selling seaweed; some get more, some less, it all depends on the sale that the association makes,” Oblitas Gallardo says.
Reproduction labs
As there’s still no scientific evidence that confining red sea urchins is effective at increasing reproduction, Copmar is trying to implement a breeding and management laboratory for the species. The goal is to obtain juvenile or “seed” urchins and care for them until they reach the right size to be moved to the sea.
According to a study funded by Copmar, 300,000 soles ($80,000) were needed to implement a small-scale lab that could produce 8,000 urchin seeds per month. It is being financed through the broader conservation project but the Marcona district government committed to adopting it and financing it starting in 2026.
For the project to function, it requires technicians who work on the species’ reproduction. “That’s why we want the fishers themselves, mostly young people, to learn to manage the lab,” Espinoza says.
The idea, he adds, is for the project to continue for many years, passing from parents to children, “just like we learned diving from our parents.”
Banner image: Fishers from Marcona have been harvesting red sea urchins since 1980. Image courtesy of Fondemar.
This story was first published here in Spanish on July 29, 2024.
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