Extent and implications of IUU catch in Mexico's marine fisheries
Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor,
Miguel A. Cisneros-Mata,
Sarah Harper and
Daniel Pauly
Marine Policy, 2013, vol. 39, issue C, 283-288
Abstract:
It is well recognized that not all fisheries catches are reported or recorded properly by either government or non-government agencies. These unreported catches can be illegal, of unregulated species, or simply not monitored due to logistical barriers. In Mexico, these barriers are an extensive and often not easily accessible coastline, mostly de facto open access fisheries, poor administrative practices and generalized corruption in the fishing sector as a whole. These conditions were likely promoted early in the last century through the government's largely successful policies to increase fisheries catches and stimulate employment and economic growth. Many years later and amid declines in fish stocks and subsequent economic benefits, most notably at local scales, it is evidently time for a fundamental change in strategy away from expansion of fishing effort and toward ecological and economic sustainability. An important step in this endeavor is to provide a quantitative pre-mortem analysis of Mexico's total marine fisheries catches during the last half-century. Results suggest that from 1950 to 2010, total catches were nearly twice as high as the official reports, with an average annual catch of 1.5 million tonnes (t) compared to 796thousandt in official statistics. In the last year of available data, 2010, official and total estimated catches were 1.5million and 2.2milliont, respectively. While these results may be perceived as a criticism of the status quo and ante, this study actually does not single out a responsible party, but is, rather, a call to the many sectors of society who contribute to a lack of control, to help overcome these conditions, and increase and sustain the benefits from Mexico's marine fisheries.
Keywords: IUU; Fisheries; Mexico; Resource management; Food security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X12002448
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:marpol:v:39:y:2013:i:c:p:283-288
DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2012.12.003
Access Statistics for this article
Marine Policy is currently edited by Eddie Brown
More articles in Marine Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().