Giant squid fishery sustainability

The actors involved in fisheries need to work under a management system that seeks to comply with national laws and regulations to consolidate the responsible and sustainable use of resources. It has been documented that organized groups achieve greater benefits if they are formed in a participatory manner with a common vision, work plans, agreed-upon rules, and commitment from government agencies.

The giant squid fishery integrates small and large-scale fishermen and fisherwomen, as well as all links in the value chain through the Comité Nacional Sistema Producto (National Product System Committee). The Committee identified the need to actively participate in fishery management and decision-making. This helped to form and formalize a technical-biological research sub-committee, made up of various sectors: government, academia, civil society organizations, and representatives of the national committee. This sub-committee established a common objective and internal regulations that set out the guidelines for assigning responsibilities and roles to each actor involved. This, in turn, strengthened governance and the collective effort to generate and document traditional and scientific information for squid co-management.

Having information for sustainable fisheries management is fundamental. Unlike many fisheries in Mexico, the giant squid fishery in small and large scale has implemented fishery monitoring since 2010. The National Giant Squid Product System Committee, together with the authorities (CONAPESCA, INAPESCA and SADER), designed and implemented the Integrated Fisheries and Environmental Information System for the analysis of the giant squid fishery (SIIPACAL) in Northwest Mexico. The platform collects detailed real-time information on catches (e.g., fishing zones, catch volumes, fishing effort, etc.), and environmental information (e.g., temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity, etc.), to learn more about the behavior of the resource according to the fishing season and environmental conditions.

The data collected in fishery monitoring are fundamental to provide information on the state of the resource and to improve management, taking into account scientific information and traditional knowledge. These good practices can be adapted to any fishery and scale, as has been done by the Comité Nacional Sistema Producto de Calamar Giant Squid.

To achieve success in the sustainability of fishery resources, there must be active participation of diverse stakeholders (fishing communities, government sector, academia, civil society organizations and the market). In 2018, COBI began monitoring the costs (economic and in-kind) associated with the implementation and development of fishery improvement projects. From this exercise, it was documented that generally at the beginning of the projects, philanthropy makes the largest economic investment through CSOs, while fishing communities make it in-kind (e.g. making their boats available for activities), and other actors also participate (e.g. government bodies or academia). The objective of community co-investment is to ensure that, over time, the fishing communities become organized and committed to continue paying the costs associated with this type of project, and to achieve greater financial autonomy. COBI and the fishing communities jointly developed a written strategy with a five-year term, in which the communities commit to maintain a gradual percentage of economic contributions to achieve co-responsibility and manage the project on their own.

By their nature, small-scale fisheries tend to have limited, poorly systematized data and short time scales. This scarcity of information represents a challenge for understanding, for example, the interaction of fishing gear with the ecosystem and its impact on the habitat; such information is fundamental in the implementation of a fishery improvement project. Around the world, different methodologies have been developed to generate information on the impacts of the fishery on the ecosystem; one of them is the modeling based on the Ecopath program with Ecosim.
COBI used this tool including information generated by fishermen and fisherwomen through fishing logs, as well as biological and ecological information for the species that inhabit the fishing zones. In addition, to strengthen the model, the traditional ecological knowledge of the fishing communities was integrated through the application of interviews, from which relevant information was obtained on the diet of the species, their geographic distribution, reproductive season, etc.

In 2017, COBI initiated a fishery improvement project in collaboration with the National Committee Giant Squid Product System, which has sought to document and support both efforts and commitments to sustainable fisheries, as well as support the role of women as leaders in decision-making within the National Committee. This has been possible thanks to two main factors: the visibility and integration of women in positions of power, such as occupying presidency roles within the committees, and the openness to involve women in a significant way in the planning, implementation and management of work plans to improve the fishery.

This openness allows setting an example of a better adaptation to egalitarian social dynamics, thus recognizing the productive sector as an extensive and complex system to ensure the sustainable management of marine-coastal resources.