Project: Spatial dynamics analysis of shrimp fishing effort in the Gulf of California

Shrimp fishery is an economic activity defined by the costs and benefits of capture operations. This fishery, with the greatest economic yield at national level, has a strong socioeconomic impact in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa, which are the states that contribute the most to national capture. However, shrimp fisheries have a negative effect in the ecosystem because the trawling net used to capture shrimp is scarcely selective, and causes damage to the marine species living in sea bottoms where shrimp is captured.

We believe that by understanding the mechanisms that take fishermen to decide where and when to fish will provide us with a key tool to develop a management plan capable of generating a sustainable and low impact fishery in the ecosystem to maintain a high yield both in quantity and in quality of the employments and currencies it generates for the country.

We will determine the consequences that space-time closed seasons could have in total capture, economic yield, and employment through the use of models that explicitly consider the costs and economic benefits that derive from fishing in alternative fishing areas, each one of them with a specific abundance of shrimp and with different distances to the port of discharge, as well as with variable time in capture management. In this manner we will be able to design a sustainable management plan that preserves the fishing activity and the jobs it generates, maintaining and raising the economic benefits of the fishermen, and reducing harmful effects to the ecosystem.