Maya Piedra, GPJ Mexico
Juan Flores, far right, a longtime handline fisherman in San Francisco, Nayarit, helps launch his boat. The rise of commercial fishing in the region has stripped small-scale anglers of profits and forced many to abandon the craft.
SAN FRANCISCO, MEXICO — Juan Flores says he was the first fisherman in San Francisco, a tiny coastal town in the western state of Nayarit. Back then, in the 1970s, he paddled into the Pacific Ocean in a small, canoe-like boat called a cayuco and snared fish one by one with a “handline” technique, laying only a hook-tipped rope in the water.
A generation of handline fishermen followed Flores, who remains lean and agile. At 77, he still fishes daily, from early morning to sunset. He still uses just a rope and hook as he slices through the shallows that hug the mountainous coast, guided by experience and instinct.
But so much else has changed.
San Francisco, whose population is roughly 1,400, is now part of the so-called Riviera Nayarit, which has morphed into an international tourist destination. And commercial vessels with huge nets have allegedly depleted the region’s fish population and muscled out handline anglers, whose way of life once defined the culture and identity of Mexico’s western coast.
In the past, a small-scale fisherman’s daily take might have come to half a ton (about 453 kilograms). Today, the fishermen say, they catch a sliver of that total.
“Before, we didn’t have the devices for locating the fish,” says Flores’ brother, Florentino Padilla. “But we went to certain places we knew, and we were sure to find [them].”
The Riviera Nayarit, which takes up well over half of Nayarit’s coastline, unspools over 180 kilometers (112 miles) and features, among other things, beaches and rivers, marshes and mountains, hot springs and waterfalls.
Nayarit’s waters once teemed with fish. But many of its most popular and valuable species are vanishing, including cod, pejegallo (roosterfish), various types of snapper, and totoaba, which can weigh up to 300 pounds (136 kilograms).
Climate change hasn’t helped. Too much carbon dioxide, which reduces oxygen levels, and the dwindling of marine fauna, which affects water temperatures, have both contributed to the loss of some species along the western coast.
A 2019 report by Nayarit’s government noted that for over a decade, “the fishing sector has been living under unsustainable conditions,” impaired by a series of problems, including “overexploitation of fishing resources, the excessive capacity of fishing fleets, [and] the increase in the fishing population and poaching.” Another state report observes that illegal commercial nets are common in Nayarit’s waters.
San Francisco sits in the municipality of Bahía de Banderas, home to the largest bay in Mexico. A majority of Bahía de Banderas residents work in tourism-related services.
On a typical day, commercial vessels churn along San Francisco’s coast in pairs, as one boat carries fishermen and the other tugs oblong nets – known as seines – that rake in tons of fish in a few hours.
To protect their market, commercial fishermen lower their prices, flattening profits for small-scale anglers, says Martín Padilla, another of Flores’ brothers and owner of San Francisco’s only fish shop.
Mario Castillo, 23, one of San Francisco’s youngest fishing captains, says scores of handline fishing boats once crowded the Riviera Nayarit’s coast. These days he sees fewer than a half-dozen.
What’s happening in San Francisco is mirrored throughout Mexico, which boasts Latin America’s longest coastline. According to government data, 589 species of fish are caught commercially, and of those, 87% are either overexploited or on the verge of being overexploited.
People like Miguel Linares, 36, who hails from a family of fishermen, no longer depend solely on the water for a living. He also works as a chef. “Fishing is not safe money like a salary,” he says. “We have gone up to a month without catching anything.”
In recent years, the Riviera Nayarit has earned global raves as a tourist spot. Luxury hotels such as the Four Seasons and St. Regis have arrived, and the region has drawn celebrity visitors, from Beyoncé and Lady Gaga to Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow.
More eateries offer seafood, and tourists and restaurateurs know little about commercial fishery conditions in Mexico. Consumer demand is a quiet culprit in the depletion of fisheries, says Myrna Bravo, a marine biologist and research professor at the University of Guadalajara.
Tuna and dorado, known worldwide as mahi-mahi, are popular among tourists, Bravo says, although catching the latter commercially is outlawed in Mexico.
The tourists are happily oblivious. Diana Pérez lives in Aguascalientes, a city in central Mexico, but likes to vacation in San Francisco, 500 kilometers (311 miles) west, where she eats seafood daily. She doesn’t think much about it.
“The information isn’t very accessible, and we as consumers aren’t very interested either,” says Pérez, 34. “All that matters to us is the taste.”
Some commercial fishermen concede the technique’s ecological harm. Juan García, 43, has fished all his life, and both his father and grandfather were handline anglers. Using a large rectangular net known as a gillnet, he catches as much as 3 tons (2,721 kilograms) of fish a day.
But to restore the ocean’s ecosystem, he says he’s willing to stop fishing for two or three years.
If everyone returned to handline angling, the fish would return, says Castillo, the young fishing captain. Economic interests make that unlikely, but he swears he’ll never use nets. “Sometimes we don’t even make back what we spend,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean we have to harm the sea.”
Maya Piedra is a Global Press Journal reporter based in Mexico.
TRANSLATION NOTE
Shannon Kirby, GPJ, translated this article from Spanish.