Saving Sharks in Mexico’s Caribbean Waters

Quintana Roo, Mexico — In a collective effort to conserve marine biodiversity, the international organization Mar Alliance, together with local communities, is carrying out a megafauna monitoring project focused primarily on sharks and rays in the Reserva de la Biosfera Caribe Mexicano and the Reserva de la Biosfera Banco Chinchorro.

The project concentrates on species vital to the ecosystem and the economy, such as the bull shark, whale shark, tiger shark, hammerhead shark, nurse shark, and various species of rays and turtles.

"The vulnerability of sharks, with populations having declined by 70% over the last five decades, makes this research urgent," detailed Cecilia Gutiérrez Navarro, Project Officer for Mar Alliance.

She added that the primary objective is to establish a baseline of scientific data for these species, which will serve as a foundation for the design and implementation of effective and sustainable public policies in favor of species conservation.

To achieve this, 30 monitoring stations have been established in Playa del Carmen, 20 in Puerto Morelos, and 25 in Banco Chinchorro to obtain data on habitat use through baited camera traps and visual transects.

The initiative in Mexico is led by Gutiérrez Navarro, who emphasizes that the key to the project is the democratization of knowledge and participatory monitoring, ensuring that the information directly benefits the coastal communities that depend on these resources, stating that "what is not measured does not improve."

She highlighted that for this research, species such as the tiger shark, lemon shark, reef shark, hammerhead shark, nurse shark, and bull shark are being tagged to understand their connectivity along the Mesoamerican Reef System, which is referred to by Rachel Graham, executive director of Mar Alliance, as the "Shark Super Highway."

The specialist noted that the project aspires to create a binational network between Mexico and Belize to standardize conservation policies for megafauna, rays, and sharks with a focus that ensures efforts are not limited by political borders, since nature does not recognize them.

She explained that the monitoring relies on various local actors such as fishermen and the Andrés Quintana Roo cooperative in Banco Chinchorro, who contribute their traditional knowledge and actively participate in data collection, tagging, and measurement of species.

Park rangers from both reserves of the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas and tourism service providers (divers) from Playa del Carmen are also participating.

Currently, the team is in the stage of analyzing the vast amount of information collected with the aim of proposing science-based public policies for the management and protection of these species crucial to the ecosystem, such as sharks, which for years have been labeled as "the villains of the story."