Yucatán Grouper Fishing Season Ends with Low Yield

Yucatán, Mexico — With just over two weeks remaining until the official closure of the grouper or scale fish fishing season in Yucatán, fishermen affiliated with the National Chamber of the Fishing and Aquaculture Industries (Canainpesca) predict that this year’s production will close with indicators below those of previous years, due to factors such as illegal fishing and weather conditions.

Although official data is not yet available in inventories due to recent leadership changes in national fishing authorities, the president of Canainpesca in the state, Enrique Sánchez Sánchez, indicated that reports from fishermen suggest the fishery has been “a bit low.”

The estimated target for this production in the region, while there is no official figure established by the Mexican Institute for Research in Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture (Imipas), ranges between 4,500 and 5,000 tons of grouper.

However, it will not be until the first or second half of February, once the fishery officially closes on January 31, that detailed and official inventories of the total catch will be available.

“We will have solid data on grouper until the first two weeks of February, once the inventories are closed. Right now we don’t have the solid or hard data on this year’s production; the truth is that production has been low, and with octopus, 80 percent of fishing effort went there and there was little scale fishing,” he added.

The fishing leader added that there are also no official data yet on the volume of production, and it will not be until March, once the fishing bans begin, that the National Commission of Aquaculture and Fisheries (Conapesca) issues general balances.

“Definitely, illegal fishing has had a big impact, obviously also the meteorological aspect, and we need to find a more radical solution for scale fishing. We need strategies like increasing fishing bans or finding ways to repopulate the sea; we have to see how to solve it,” he stated.

It is worth mentioning that the concern over the expected low performance of grouper and lobster contrasts with the recent success of the octopus fishery. According to the local government, Yucatán closed the season with a catch of 25,462 tons, whose commercial value was estimated at 1,762 million pesos.