Fishing Down Coastal Food Webs in the Gulf of California

We used information from interviews with fishers, fisheries statistics, and field surveys to document changes in fisheries and fish assemblages in shallow coastal habitats in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Coastal food webs in the Gulf of California have been “fished down” during the last 30 years–fisheries shifted from large, long‐lived species belonging to high trophic levels to small short‐lived species from lower trophic levels. In addition, the maximum individual length of the landings has decreased about 45 cm in only 20 years. Although some catches are stagnant or still increasing for some species groups, catch‐per‐unit‐effort declined for most species groups after 1980. These declines were associated to a dramatic increase in fishing effort in the region in the late 1970s‐early 1980s, mostly in the number of gillnets. Fishing not only impacted target species, but also caused community‐wide changes. These results suggest that coastal fisheries in the Gulf of California are unsustainable and their management needs to be reevaluated with sound regulatory measures to prevent further degradation of coastal food webs, and the concurrent inefficiency of artisanal fishing.