The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced this Thursday that Mexican fishing vessels will not be able to enter its ports due to illegal fishing, something that the NGO Oceana Mexico said today that it had already been warned.
“We (Oceana) warned that if Mexico did not take serious measures to combat illegal fishing and protect endangered species, we could face another series of sanctions and today we are seeing the result,” Mariana Aziz, director of Transparency for Oceana in Mexico, told Efe.
The measure was imposed as a result of the biannual report from NOAA to the United States Congress, where Mexico received “negative certification” for illegal fishing activities in US waters and incidental capture of sea turtles.
The Oceana organization told Efe that the sanction comes after several notices sent to Mexico by the Author US fishing authority.
In August 2021 they warned that the Latin American country was engaging in illegal fishing activities after detecting vessels fishing in North American waters without a permit.
Also in 2021 the certification to export shrimp was lost due to finding boats that lacked turtle exclusion devices.
Oceana, Aziz pointed out, expect Mexico to “take take this warning seriously” and finally take “concrete and substantive” actions to combat illegal fishing.
“For now we only see palliative actions that do not solve substantive problems”, sentenced the specialist.
The ban derives, Aziz explained, from the detection of ships in the Gulf of Mexico illegally fishing red snapper, a species of great interest that is even exported to the United States. United.
But in addition, this type of activ ities has an impact on other species such as sea turtles, since some fishing boats lack devices that allow these animals to escape from the nets.
Also on vaquitas, of which only 7 specimens detected by non-governmental organizations, this due to illegal fishing, for example, of totoaba, a species with which it is trafficked.
Faced with this situation, in December 2019 a working group was formed with the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Commission (Conapesca), Oceana and other organizations to advance in a traceability law that allows knowing the route of the fish from the time it is caught until it is marketed.
“However, since March 2021 this standard has been detained in Conapesca. We have not received any news about it”, declared the specialist.
With all this, Oceana urged the Mexican authorities to work jointly between instances, with the organizations and with the fishing sector to avoid measures such as the one imposed by the United States and thus prevent “everyone from being affected by a few who break the rules”.
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