The Celestún Fishing Refuge Zone (ZRP) along with the international group Wild Aid, have joined efforts to combat poaching within the refuge, which has become the main problem within the zone.
Ylmar Josué Canul Reyes, president of the ZRP Committee, expressed that this joint effort arises from the lack of resources to carry out surveillance of the entire natural reserve because it is a fairly large area and is not delimited with buoys, but only has GPS coordinates and in some cases people enter to fish without realizing it.
“In this case we have the task of informing that they are inside the zone and we ask them to leave, we also work with the WildAid group, on issues of advice and information to fishermen, in order to detect and report cases of poaching, in addition to receiving financial support for the work of monitoring the ZRP.”
This assistance is very important given that if the issue of poaching is a real problem, it is aggravated with the beginning of the pulpeada, where they detect many boats that should not be on the site.
“We carry out dissemination actions with the objective of informing fishermen about the location and regulations of the fishing refuge, and with the group we also give trainings on how to approach when we find a poacher or an unwanted boat inside the polygon.”
The site allows commercial fishing of octopus with jimba during the fishing season; as well as commercial fishing of carito, sierra and picuda by trolling, during the months of October to February; in addition, recreational diving without extraction and research and teaching activities.
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