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The blue area is currently where you can't commercially fish for species reserved for
sports fishing (billfish and dorado). The orange area is where the stiped marlin of the
Eastern Pacicic Ocean come to winter, feed and breed and is also protected from commercial
fishing for billfish.
The shark norma (regulation) 029 was proposed in 2002 and was supposed to protect sharks and rays in Mexican waters. While it had some good points its primary purpose was to let 200 longliners fish in Mexico's conservation zones and core management area for protected species reserved for sports fishing. The Norma (regulation) was defeated in October 2002 and the government has been working to put a new one in place.
The latest proposals from Conapesca (Mexican Fisheries) would allow those 200 longliners to now fish in the Sea of Cortez within 30 miles of the land. It would allow longlining in small boats within 15 miles of the coast. It differentiates between large and medium large boats. The large longliners 70 to 100 feet couldn't come into the Sea, but what the fishermen want is to be able to convert shrimpers that have overfished their resource to longlining. There are 1600 of these boats in the Sea of Cortez, many of which want to convert. They all would have to stay outside 50 miles along the Baja coastline(Click for details)
Conapesca, under pressure for killing whales in drift gillnets, has also said that it would ban all drift gillnets from Mexican waters, except for the bottom gillnets used by the ribereņos (local small boat fishermen).
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