Should we eat them or conserved them? Setting an improved approach for shark fisheries management in Mexico

Protect biodiversity, avoid overfishing, and ensure food security are the main challenges for several small-scale shark fisheries (SSSF) around the world. Mexico is among the five shark fishing nations, and in 2017 a total of 39,373 tons were landed across this country. Around 60% of these landings come from the SSSF, mainly from northwestern Mexico. However, in the same year, there was an apparent consumption of 40,097 tons, indicating the high demand for shark meat in this country. Shark fishing has a double gain, meat and fins that are exported to international markets, mainly to Honk-Kong, making this fishery profitably to artisanal fishers. Moreover, along the Mexican coast in the Pacific (MEXPAC), SSSF is based in poor coastal communities where, sometimes, there are not sustainable marine-based alternatives. And fishing data for this fishery is very limited. Since 1993 several regulations have been issued, which among them, a fishing ban during May to July has a significant effect on the whole SSSF from the MEXPAC. This fishing ban does not take into consideration the oceanographic regions. Neither, the expected differences in the seasonal life traits periods that occur with seasonal oceanography variations, or the effects of the ban on the socio-ecological cycle of fisher communities. To start to understand the heterogeneity of SSSF in the MEXPAC, I am using the generalized additive modeling approach to investigate the relationship of the primary shark species catch densities with socio-economic and oceanographic variables by regions. Even this work is underway, and final models will be presented at the meeting, results of this work are necessary to set the baseline to improve the SSSF management by recognising shark fishing region dynamics in the MEXPAC. This improvement has a more sustainable sound bases, due to the consideration of the social-ecological dynamics by incorporating regional poverty indices, seasonal catch species composition and value, and sea surface temperature, under the vision for the conservation of shark species in the MEXPAC.