Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is a wild place. Arid and mountainous with little fresh water, the region’s communities have lived off the richness of the surrounding ocean for as long as they have been settled there.
“The only thing we know and know how to do is have direct contact with the sea,” says Edgar Murillo Talamantes, a fourth-generation fisher and president of the Cooperative Islote de Agua Verde. “The first thing we see is the sea. Our economic activity is the sea. Our hobby is the sea. For us, the sea and what surrounds us is everything.”
But as fishing techniques became more efficient and illegal fishing more common, local communities like Agua Verde saw the species they relied upon to survive – grouper, snapper, triggerfish – decline in staggering fashion. “Many of my colleagues started working when there weren't even motors; they worked with just oars and sails,” says Murillo. “But as the community grew, the road came in, they started to commercialize and exploit many species that had been abundant.”
Today, the finfish here are bouncing back thanks to a groundbreaking effort to establish networks of fish refuges – marine zones protected by the community from fishing for several years, allowing fish populations to recover. The fish refuges, which are now deeply embedded into the region’s culture, have become a model for how communities are working with nature to support healthy ecosystems and sustain local economies.
“The sea represents everything because it is our only [source of] economic activity,” says Murillo. “So, why not think about taking care of it? Why not be a little more friendly to it? By supporting fish refuges, “We feel like we're part of preserving what our ancestors taught us.”
The effort in Baja was led by Walton Family Foundation grantee Sociedad de Historia Natural Niparajá (Niparajá). Following years of collaboration with local communities and government agencies, the first refuges opened in 2012 in Baja California Sur. In total, 11 zones were closed to fishing for five years. This effort was replicated with other fishing cooperatives in the Mexican Caribbean with the support of another grantee, Comunidad y Biodiversidad (COBI), leading to the establishment of additional fish refuges in 2013.
This collaboration was critical, says Stuart Fulton, COBI’s director of development. “You can’t just parachute into a community, design a project, and leave. You need to trust the fishers and the communities, and they need to trust you.”
Rather than simply closing the fisheries and cutting off communities from their livelihoods, COBI and Niparajá ensured that fishers became a vital part of the solution to help the fisheries rebound. Fishers and their families were trained as underwater and on-land monitors, equipping them to track changes in fish populations and document catch data.
Over time, the local monitors established a baseline and tracked real-time improvements in both fish counts and size.
Through ongoing training, community members are no longer just fishing for fish, they are fishing for data. “Besides being fishermen, they are now scientists,” says Ollin González Cuellar, marine conservation director for Niparajá. “They are generating data that can help manage the fishery. There's pride in learning a new technique … in being heard.”
In Baja, conservation work has become generational, with the concept of sustainable fishing now embedded into the local identity.
“These kids have grown up with the fish refuges since they were eight years old, and now they’re in their 20s. When they grow up, they want to be part of the dive team [monitoring the refuges],” says Amy Hudson Weaver, a consultant and pioneer of fish refuges.
Without question, fish refuges in Mexico have been a resounding success. After the first five years of monitoring – and with proof that fish size and numbers were increasing – every single community in Baja chose to renew the original refuges and expand into new areas. The refuges have been in continuous operation for 15 years and are now under renewal to extend their protection for years to come.
Other fishing communities in Mexico are now adopting this nature-based solution to protect the ocean and improve their livelihoods. As requests from fishing communities for more fish refuges continue to increase, the Mexican government plans to more than triple its fish refuge zones in 2026.
Mexico’s fish refuges are proof that targeted, thoughtful collaboration with fishing communities can both protect the ecosystem and improve catch for communities that rely on fishing to continue their way of life.
Of their ongoing work with marine conservation, Murillo says, “We've learned to see fishing differently. If we have healthy seas, we have healthy families. It’s our collective source of life. The ocean gives to me, but I also take care of the ocean.”
