Baja’s next Cabo Pulmo. Please help, donate this year!
On June 5, 1995, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo declared the area surrounding Cabo Pulmo a National Marine Park, setting in motion what has become the “poster child” of protected reefs throughout the world.
Before the park was established, the area was heavily overfished. Since 1995, as a result of citizen driven vigilance and support, illegal fishing has been eliminated dramatically benefiting the marine ecosystem, which has seen over 400% increase in total biomass. Cabo Pulmo recovery.
In the 20 years while Cabo Pulmo fisheries and reefs recovered the other nations parks in the Sea of Cortez continued to see rapidly declining fisheries. It is criticially important to continue to replicate similar programs in the Sea of Cortez. There is a plan underway now to duplicate the success of Cabo Pulmo Marine Park’s amazing recovery in Archipelago Espiritu Santo National Park, outside the large city of La Paz.
Please take the time to read the following information and respond accordingly. Thanks for your interest.
Gary Graham
Just recently, SeaWatch initiated (and funded) a campaign to reverse the 20 year decline in fisheries and loss of biodiversity in Espiritu Santo National Park. Already we’ve had significant success, including three major national supermarkets in La Paz agreeing to not sell parrotfish (an ecologically critical species on the reefs around the park), and several restaurants agreeing to not serve parrotfish to their customers. Without a market, we can curtail the illegal fishing at night around the park, and we are seeing the results firsthand already.
Espiritu Santo National Park is unique in the entire Gulf of California, and our goal is nothing less than to replicate the amazing fisheries recovery at Cabo Pulmo Marine Park in the southern Baja peninsula, a park noted internationally for its incredible biodiversity. Cabo Pulmo’s success was due to strong vigilance on the water, night and day, and support from the entire community. That will be harder to accomplish in a large city of 300,000 like La Paz, but we have the boats, a plan and a team that will make it work. Our night patrols can stop the illegal fishery, which in the past took 20 tons of reef fish a night. And with your help we will succeed.
Take a moment to read our campaign brochure HERE and please help by making a (USA) tax deductible, year-end donation to this exciting campaign!
Thank you,
Mike McGettigan, Founder
SeaWatch, Inc.
501c3 corporation
Check out page 3 in the link below. It’s the vigilance program Sea Watch started in 2009. It was critical and successful against pistolero’s and encerradores immediately. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-eWlzy5Pko Then by 2011 new payoffs to Conapesca neutered the successes. With this new campaign and new people at conapesca we are again stopping the Pistoleros. Our patrol boat carries inspectores from Conapesca and Profepa.
http://www.gob.mx/conapesca/prensa/aseguran-elementos-de-conapesca-600-kgs-de-pescado-capturado-ilegal?idiom=es
Sea Watch will match any donations for 24 hour patrols. So for 150 bucks we get a 24 hour day and night patrol at Archipelago Espritu Santo. We only need two to three patrols during the dark twelve days of the month to totally stop this illegal fishery that was still taking two to four tons a week from the Islands just five months ago.
Think you could get some people to put in $150 or a multiple of that to help out. We are now winning and stores and restaurants are now signing up to not sell parrot fish and we are changing the attitudes of the 300k citizens of La Paz about the importance of their amazing Archipelago and the need to leave the parrot fish alive on the reefs.
