Fishers Running Their Own Marine Reserves

Comunidad y Biodiversidad (COBI), founded in 1999, works with coastal fishing communities across Mexico to design and manage voluntary no-take marine reserves and sustainable fishing practices. Fishers themselves are trained as citizen scientists to run underwater monitoring transects that inform local management decisions. The approach has been applied in reserves along both the Pacific and Gulf of California coasts, strengthening fish stocks and fishing livelihoods.