When David Borbón first arrived in the village of El Delgadito in 1980, it was a paradise with seemingly unlimited natural resources. He continued to return seasonally to fish for lobster, sea bass and clams. Located on the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur in Mexico, El Delgadito juts out into the mouth of the San Ignacio Lagoon, one of the winter sanctuaries of the eastern Pacific gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus). It sits within the El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, a vast semiarid ecosystem with wetlands, marshes and mangroves. In the early 2000s, Borbón settled there permanently with his wife, Ana María Peralta. But a series of severe weather fronts, bringing heavy rain and powerful winds, combined with overfishing, eroded the shoreline and destroyed the area’s mangrove ecosystems. No longer did it look like the paradise he once knew. Between 1990 and 2005, the San Ignacio Lagoon experienced a 2,554-hectare (6,311-acre) reduction in mangrove coverage as a result of atmospheric processes, such as hurricanes or low precipitation, as well as human activities, leading to an annual deforestation rate of 3.83%. Without mangroves, fish and shellfish are deprived of food, shelter and protection. Residents of El Delgadito, who depend on fishing to survive, were greatly affected by their decline. “The profits from fisheries no longer yielded those figures from the ‘70s,” Borbón told Mongabay over a phone call. “It was not profitable to continue overexploiting marine species that were already very, very depleted.” But Borbón had an idea. Not trained in any…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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