PANGAS: An interdisciplinary ecosystem-based research framework for small-scale fisheries in the Northern Gulf of California

ADRIAN MUNGUÍA-VEGA; JORGE TORRE-COSIO; PEGGY TURK-BOYER; GUIDO MARINONE; MIGUEL LAVIN; TAD PFISTER; WILLIAM W SHAW; GUSTAVO DANEMAN; PETER RAIMONDI; ALEJANDRO CASTILLO-LOPEZ; ANA CINTI; JENNIFER DUBERSTEIN; MARCIA MORENO-BAEZ; MARIO ROJO; GASPAR SORIA; LAURA SANCHEZ-VELASCO; HEM MORZARIA-LUNA; LUIS BOURILLÓN; KIRSTEN ROWEL; RICHARD CUDNEY-BUENO

Journal of the Southwest

The University of Arizona Press

Año: 2015 vol. 57 p. 337 - 390

0894-8410

The PANGAS project, (Pesca Artesanal del Norte del Golfo de California: Ambiente y Sociedad/ Small-Scale Fisheries of the Northern Gulf of California: Society and the Environment) was founded in 2005 as a long-term interdisciplinary project for research and management of small-scale fisheries in the Northern Gulf of California (NGC).  It was structured as a bi-national partnership between three academic institutions and three NGOs to support the Mexican government for fisheries management and marine conservation.  The NGC ecosystem extends from San Francisquito (Baja California) and Bahía Kino (Sonora), including San Pedro Mártir Island in the south, to the Colorado River delta in the north with two extremely productive and highly bio-diverse subregions, the Upper Gulf of California and the Midriff Islands region. The region has an annual catch of ca. 18,000 metric tons of more than 80 species of fish and invertebrates, consumed primarily in the southwestern United States, eastern Asia and central Mexico. In its first decade PANGAS developed a framework for ecosystem-based research andmanagement of small-scale fisheries and tested it in the NGC. This interdisciplinary framework included the identification of key ecosystems and small-scale fisheries that can serve as representative proxies, with the use of rapid appraisal techniques to characterize and select key fisheries and fishing communities represented in a spatial and temporal dimension. Biophysical and governance information was generated and collected for each proxy species selected from the rocky reef ecosystem, and one species from wetland systems, the blue crab. Several methods were used to assess the biophysical environment: 1) we generated hypothesis for marine connectivity via larval dispersal by developing coupled biological oceanographic models (CBOM´s) using oceanographic field data and validated this with empirical population genetics and field subtidal monitoring; 2) we identified and characterized key habitats; and, 3) we developed population dynamic models.  To describe governance in fisheries, PANGAS identified rules in use and incentives for compliance and social networks for the fishers living in the 17 permanent fishing camps and towns along the 3,000 km coastline of the NGC. PANGAS products include, among others: collection of critical life history information for more than 10 commercial species; development of the first CBOM´s validated with genetic data for 7 species in the NGC; development of the first region-wide maps depicting multi-species and multi-community fishing activities; training of at least 50 fishers from 4 fishing communities in subtidal monitoring techniques and collection of fishery data; training of 23 undergraduate, graduate, and postdoc students from Latin America, the United States and Europe on various aspects of marine ecosystem-based research and management; publication of over 100 scientific papers, reports, protocols and thesis; production of management recommendations in various official (government backed and/or produced) and non-official formats. We present the story of the PANGAS collaboration, provide examples for each step of the PANGAS interdisciplinary framework and discuss the various challenges that PANGAS faced to emerge with a series of lessons learned.  We also point to future challenges and describe current efforts to synthesize, archive, communicate and follow-up PANGAS information in databases and incorporating it into management. Finally, we highlight examples of collaboration between PANGAS and government agencies for single and multispecies fisheries and show how an interdisciplinary approach can inform the design and implementation of a new generation of strategies for marine ecosystem-based research and management in Mexico and Latin-America.