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Resource Management
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Coastal Fisheries Conservation in Mexico
The coastal fishermen of Tamaulipas have overfished and are overfishing the nearshore areas of the Gulf of Mexico and lagoons that stretch for many miles along the coast. These are very fertile and productive areas that if properly managed with controlled commercial fishing activity can recover and provide a very valuable resource for ecotourism and sport fishing activities on this coast. Texas started a program in 1995 to greatly reduce commercial fishing and promote recreational fishing. It has been a tremendous economic success. Recreational fishing in Texas is now a $1.7 billion a year economic benefit to the state and has created a 1,000 new recreational fishing based jobs per year over the last five years.
What is happening to the commercial fishermen of Mexico and Tamaulipas has happened to fishermen in Texas and around the world. They are caught in an economic trap from which they cannot escape, until they have destroyed the resource on which they depend. These fishermen are simply continuing the activity they have been occupied in for many years. As the fishing techniques have improved it has increased the efficiency of their activities. This more efficient fishing plus the normal population increase within these coastal communities have created the overfishing problem.
Any new conservation programs that address this problem must consider a new occupation for the coastal fishermen since this type of work is all they know. Aquaculture as marine fish and shellfish farms offers the fishermen a new occupation working in the sea and developing a new industry for the Tamaulipas coast that is sustainable and environmentally friendly when properly managed. The training of fishermen as fish farmers will be much easier since this activity is much the same as the work they do now.
This type of program can accomplish four things:
- It employs fishermen in an alternate occupation that takes advantage of their skills and existing equipment,
- It has the conservation benefit of taking the pressure off fisheries resources and allows them to recover,
- That recovery can support the development of a recreationally based fishery that promotes conservation because it has economic benefits, and
- Aquaculture provides a sustainable alternative income and protein source while the fishery recovers to provide an expanded employment base
The HRI Coastal Fisheries Conservation Program plans to create a fish farm near the fishing community of La Pesca and to retrain the coastal fishermen to be fish farmers. The demonstration project will start with a small group of 4-6 net pens to grow species native to the Gulf coast of Tamaulipas. The net pens are constructed of very strong plastic tubing with a steel framework for strength to support a nylon mesh enclosure to hold the fish during the growing to market size. Small fish (alevines) will be stocked into the net pens then fed a prepared diet for about 1 year until they have grown to market size. This net pen system will be anchored to the sea floor and built to survive the storms in the Gulf. The project design will include fishermen using their existing boats to service the cages and feed the fish.
The fish farm will not only provide jobs for the fishermen but a new source of excellent quality seafood for local consumption as well as sales to other parts of Mexico. As the tourism industry continues to develop on the Gulf coast it is important for restaurants to have a reliable supply of good quality fish to meet the demand. When people visit the coast they will enjoy eating good quality seafood produced from the fish farm therefore creating larger demand for the product. This provides a growing market for the converted fish farmers to slowly expand the net pen operations to meet the demand.
Weather Balloons – old concept, new technology
Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI), with NOAA and the Northern Gulf Institute, is working on a new program that incorporates the latest in tracking balloon technology. Called “precision release,” it more accurately monitors wind movements in advance of hurricanes.
The Driftsonde Balloon Program is designed to provide forecasters with better data to reduce the “cone of uncertainty” of tracking models predicting when and where hurricanes will hit the coast. This will save lives and property along the Gulf coast as the data collection will be very useful to hurricane modelers seeking improved statistics to track the storms and their intensity. With the super-pressure balloons, dozens, if not hundreds, can be deployed to saturate the hurricane environment with measurements to improve hurricane track forecasts to provide data in regions the traditional reconnaissance data can't measure because of safety constraints.
The driftsondes will provide unique data on the conditions that lead to the formation of Atlantic hurricanes. They float at a speed close to the movement of the easterly waves, so we can monitor them from their earliest stages. Each driftsonde has to be robust enough to endure days of extreme stratospheric cold (averaging minus-80 degrees Fahrenheit) as well as the intense sunlight of the high, thin atmosphere.
For the balloon deployment to be affordable and practical, the system also requires low-cost, lightweight, off-the-shelf instruments capable of operating reliably in low pressure and in temperature extremes with very low power. Because of their flexible and relatively inexpensive nature, scientists believe, driftsondes may soon become a popular way to monitor and study many types of weather across the world's oceans and other remote regions.
Researchers from HRI and the Northern Gulf Institute launched their first balloon, the second of two balloons launched from other sites around the country, to track Tropical Storm Patricia as it moved across the Pacific Ocean. The launch occurred on Oct. 15, at 3:30 p.m. from the lawn adjacent to the HRI on the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi campus.
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Wetlands loss is an ongoing issue for the Gulf of Mexico. (photo credit: TPWD)
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