Community Corner

Reserve Sees Huge Jump in Fish

Scripps research team makes discovery in Baja; protections stopped depletion by fishing.

The fish population near the southern tip of Baja California jumped 463 percent over the decade since it became a marine wildlife reserve, researchers said today.

Cabo Pulmo National Park, once depleted by fishing, saw the increase through 2009, according to a study of the area by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

The results of the work are featured in the journal, Public Library of Science One.

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The park has become the world's most robust marine reserve, the surprised researchers said, showing that depleted fisheries can recover to levels normally seen in areas that rarely have been fished.

Such an increase in a large reserve “represents tons of new fish produced every year,” said Octavio Aburto-Oropeza, a Scripps postdoctoral researcher and the study's lead author. “No
other marine reserve in the world has shown such a fish recovery.”

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National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala said only medium-sized fish were seen in the reserve in 1999, but 10 years later it had larger varieties like parrotfish, groupers, snapper and sharks.

The authors said local residents have been strictly enforcing
restrictions against fishing in the area, and that policymakers should be aware of the potential economic benefits for the community.

“Showing what's happened in Cabo Pulmo will contribute to ongoing conservation efforts in the marine environment and recovery of local coastal economies,” Aburto-Oropeza said.

City News Service contributed to this report.


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