Sea cucumber catch reconstruction and species composition as determined by seizures analyses from the IUU fishing in the Campeche Bank, Mexico

Abstract

Between 2010 and 2018, the sea cucumber fishing in the Campeche Bank, Mexico, was a flourishing fishery showing increasing landings followed by a precipitous decline, where illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU) was an important factor to its deterioration. Currently, despite this fishery is under permanent fishing ban since 2019, the IUU fishing prevails. This work aims to reconstruct the past sea cucumber catch, and species composition, in this region based on seizures analyses, between 2010 and 2021, collected from official documents. We estimated the total IUU catch of sea cucumber at 8117.6 t and detected that fishery statistics, based on the sea cucumber fishery in the southern Gulf of Mexico reported to FAO, have information gaps indicating overexploitation of Isostichopus badionotus. Our current assessment must be used cautiously, and may serve to justify the need to conduct these analyses in order to understand the reality of IUU fishing in the region. We recommend incorporating fishers’ community programs in order to deter the IUU fishing through active participation of legal fishing dealers, in agreement with fisher cooperatives or guilds, which are eager to support the sea cucumber fishery in the Yucatan and also implementing fishing refuge areas (FRAs) for the development of guided and supervised stock restoration campaigns.