The waves rock our boat slightly, as Hubert Mendez throws himself into the sea. A few minutes later he re-emerges, proudly clutching several molluscs with triangular shells.
Mendez, a fisher from the Manglito neighbourhood of La Paz, Mexico is holding “callo de hacha”.
Found mainly on the Mexican Pacific coast, callo can be sold for around a thousand pesos per kilogram (US$58), double the price of shrimp.
Due to overfishing and pollution, the species had been close to disappearing from a part of the Bay of La Paz called La Ensenada. Then, in 2011, a group of local fishers who take pride in the fishing tradition decided to put a stop to illegal extraction and help the mollusc recover.
Despite setbacks involving invasive species and extreme weather, callo numbers have now rebounded to levels that allow the Manglito community to harvest a sustainable amount, selling some on to consumers and restaurants around Mexico.
For years, many fishing and harvesting activities in El Manglito went unchecked, with most fishers practising without a licence or permit. The absence of fisheries management contributed to the overexploitation of callo. By the early 2000s, this had become blatantly evident in La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur state; every time the fishers returned from a trip, they seemed to have less callo.
Pollution from La Paz damaged the marine ecosystem and further reduced catches. “By 2000, El Manglito had become a forgotten place. It had literally become the toilet of La Paz,” says Alejandro Robles, president of Noroeste Sustentable, a civil society organisation that supports and trains local people to restore the area. “All the drains went there; the beaches were not well kept and overfishing was turning the mangroves into graves.”
Women have played a fundamental role in the recovery of the callo. During the first year of the project, in 2011, poachers entered the restoration zone in El Conchalito.
No one on the board of directors of the El Manglito fishers’ organisation, which is male-dominated, seemed to be doing anything about it. So, in 2017, a group of 22 women asked for a space within the project.
NOS could only offer salaries for seven people to monitor El Conchalito. The women decided to split the payments in half, so they could have places for 14.
When they first started cultivating callo, looters threatened them verbally and even with knives. Sometimes, those who stole their product were people from El Manglito itself, who did not agree with the restoration efforts. Some were actually relatives of the Guardians.
The year 2019 saw a new approach. Relations with the authorities having improved, the Guardians worked with them to place a barrier of boulders in the way of vehicles. Later, they even managed to obtain financial support from the authorities. The Guardians are nowadays one of the most active pillars of the community and an example for women fishers from other regions of the country, where they have gone to share their experiences and give workshops.