Underwater Baja California Wildlife Park Comes To Life
Once depleted by fishing, Cabo Pulmo now boasts a healthy mix of wildlife. Image: Octavio Aburto-Oropeza/iLCP
A new study led by researchers
at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego (USA) has found
that a thriving undersea wildlife park tucked away near the southern tip
of Mexico’s Baja peninsula has proven to be the world’s most robust
marine reserve in the world.
Results of a 10-year analysis of Cabo Pulmo National Park (CPNP), published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE
journal, revealed that the total amount of fish in the reserve
ecosystem (the “biomass”) boomed more than 460 percent from 1999 to
2009. Citizens living around Cabo Pulmo, previously depleted by fishing,
established the park in 1995 and have strictly enforced its “no take”
restrictions.
“We could have never dreamt of such an
extraordinary recovery of marine life at Cabo Pulmo,” said National
Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala, who started the study in
1999. “In 1999 there were only medium-sized fishes, but ten years later
it’s full of large parrotfish, groupers, snappers and even sharks.”
The most striking result of the paper,
the authors say, is that fish communities at a depleted site can recover
up to a level comparable to remote, pristine sites that have never been
fished by humans.
“The study’s results are surprising in
several ways,” said Octavio Aburto-Oropeza, a Scripps postdoctoral
researcher, World Wildlife Fund Kathryn Fuller fellow and lead author of
the study. “A biomass increase of 463 percent in a reserve as large as
Cabo Pulmo (71 square kilometers) represents tons of new fish produced
every year. No other marine reserve in the world has shown such a fish
recovery.”
The paper notes that factors such as the
protection of spawning areas for large predators have been key to the
reserve’s robustness. Most importantly, local enforcement, led by the
determined action of a few families, has been a major factor in the
park’s success. Boat captains, dive masters and other locals work to
enforce the park’s regulations and share surveillance, fauna protection
and ocean cleanliness efforts.
We believe that the success of CPNP is
greatly due to local leadership, effective self-enforcement by local
stakeholders, and the general support of the broader community,” the
authors note in their report.
Strictly enforced marine reserves have
been proven to help reduce local poverty and increase economic benefits,
the researchers say. Cabo Pulmo’s marine life recovery has spawned
eco-tourism businesses, including coral reef diving and kayaking, making
it a model for areas depleted by fishing in the Gulf of California and
elsewhere.