Pro­ject De­tails Mex­ico

The Ami­gos de Isla Con­toy have im­ple­men­ted in 2012 what they had planned - more than that: it was pos­sible to raise ad­di­tional funds and to push for­ward eight pro­jects in the field of biod­iversity, eco­sys­tems and mar­ine re­sources. Some of these ad­di­tional pro­jects have also been the basis for the work that has just be­gun in 2012. 

Report by Catalina Galindo de Prince

AIC has built a strong re­la­tion­ship with com­munity lead­ers and many stake­hold­ers who have given their full sup­port in the events and activ­it­ies car­ried out by the or­gan­iz­a­tion in Isla Mujeres and Isla Con­toy. Through our work we have gained con­fid­ence with in­di­vidu­als in the Sec­ret­ary of Edu­ca­tion which helps to fa­cil­it­ate our edu­ca­tional pro­gram in the schools.

AIC has ex­ten­ded its in­flu­ence into the gen­eral pub­lic by hav­ing a very vis­ible pres­ence in com­munity and cul­tural events in down­town Isla Mujeres and Cancun. These pub­lic ap­pear­ance present­a­tions of the ex­hib­i­tions “Isla Con­toy, a nat­ural jewel of the Mex­ican Carib­bean” and the “Pro­gram for the con­ser­va­tion cul­ture of the whale shark” to­gether with the mu­seum col­lec­tion of 25 real size pa­per mache fig­ures of mar­ine life, birds and rep­tiles , have opened doors to have an im­pact on a state level in 2012, as we have been in­vited by the Sec­ret­ary of Cul­ture and the Sec­ret­ary of Edu­ca­tion to make present­a­tions throughout the State of Quintana Roo. The mu­ni­cip­al­ity of Isla Mujeres has asked AIC for a per­man­ent ex­hib­i­tion down­town as they con­sider it im­port­ant for the com­munity and a pos­it­ive pro­jec­tion for the tour­ists. The two ex­hib­i­tions and an­imal fig­ures re­ceived very good re­views from tour­ists from many dif­fer­ent coun­tries, and some of the pos­it­ive com­ments came from sci­ent­ists.

AIC made an al­li­ance with the Mi­grat­ory Bird Cen­ter of the Smith­so­nian Con­ser­va­tion Bio­logy In­sti­tute in Wash­ing­ton, USA to provide courses on trop­ical mi­grat­ory birds to stu­dents in Isla Mujeres. This is an ex­change pro­gram with schools from dif­fer­ent states in the north east of the USA. This pro­gram was very well re­ceived by more than 350 chil­dren that took the courses.

AIC was able to pro­ject it­self and its work in en­vir­on­mental edu­ca­tion through a spe­cial pro­gram filmed in Isla Mujeres by TV 3 Spain, a ma­jor TV com­pany from Bar­celona, which was broad­cas­ted in Spain in Septem­ber. An in­ter­view with the ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ector of AIC was pub­lished in the on­board magazine En Viva of the Amer­ican air­line Viva Air­bus, which helped pro­ject Isla Con­toy and AIC.

 
Supporting Cooperativa Vision-Mujer

One of the meas­ures to im­prove fish pro­duc­tion in the en­tity is to have the know­ledge of the ad­vances and new trends in tech­no­logy with a view to es­tab­lish­ing mar­ine farms on the coast and make use of fish­ery products in a sus­tain­able man­ner, pro­mot­ing the par­ti­cip­a­tion of wo­men in these activ­it­ies.

Lorena Lopez, pro­ject co­ordin­ator of the Co­oper­ativa Vis­ion-Mujer, has made an ar­range­ment with the Re­gional Cen­ter for Fish­er­ies Re­search (CRIP) to start train­ing courses and de­velop ini­ti­at­ives to en­able us to boost our eco­nomic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment and help the en­vir­on­ment. The CRIP presen­ted us with a first pro­posal to im­part a first course in Bi­o­tech­no­logy Trans­fer to Fat­ten Spiny Lob­ster.

“Our ini­ti­at­ive aim is to em­power wo­men in man­aging crop­ping sys­tems fat­ten­ing spiny lob­ster (Pan­u­lirus Ar­gus) res­ult­ing in a util­iz­a­tion of the re­source in the me­dium term in a sus­tain­able way. Dur­ing May 2011 was given the first 20-hours-course in the Fish­er­ies Re­search Sta­tion of Isla Mujeres and six membres of our co­oper­ativa par­ti­cip­ated. Given the suc­cess of the first course, we agree with CRIP to ap­ply for self-em­ploy­ment schol­ar­ships to take the second part of the course, more de­tailed and ex­tens­ive, with the aim that par­ti­cipants ob­tain fin­an­cial sup­port to at­tend this course. So we took on the task of look­ing through the State Em­ploy­ment Ser­vice of Quintana Roo and on Septem­ber 14th they au­thor­ize 20 schol­ar­ships. With this op­por­tun­ity to have more self-em­ploy­ment schol­ar­ships, we was launched a call to in­cor­por­ate more wo­men in the train­ing course."

This second course of 120 hours was given Septem­ber to Oc­to­ber 2011 and 20 wo­men par­ti­cip­ated. They ap­plied the the­or­et­ical-prac­tical as­pects about: Bio­logy of the spe­cies, - ba­sics of mari­cul­ture, - in­stall­a­tion and man­age­ment of farm­ing units,- hand­ling equip­ment and sup­ply air and sea wa­ter - in­teg­rated man­age­ment of the pro­cess of fat­ten­ing,- clean­ing and si­phon­ing,-diet and food pre­par­a­tion, -data col­lec­tion,- and bio­metry meas­ure­ments.

The mem­bers of the Co­oper­at­ive Vis­ion-Mujer will con­tinue in the ap­plic­a­tion and ex­ten­sion of the know­ledge gained, and now we are look­ing for a third train­ing course for the use of fish­ery products, such as lob­ster molts for use in mak­ing han­di­crafts for pro­duc­tion and sales and gen­er­ate a eco­nomy in the short term, while still work­ing on the de­vel­op­ment of al­tern­at­ive pro­duc­tion sys­tems in the fish­er­ies sec­tor and the pro­duc­tion of Chitosan for Biofer­til­izers, among oth­ers.

 
Recycling on Isla Mujeres and sustainable tourism in the region

Thanks to the strength of the re­cyc­ling pro­gram in Isla Mujeres that AIC star­ted six years ago and con­tin­ues its in­volve­ment in, the mu­ni­cipal gov­ern­ment has been able to ac­cess funds to build a re­cyc­ling cen­ter, and to pur­chase ma­chinery and a truck for the col­lec­tion of the ma­ter­i­als.

AIC has trained this year 14 guides of Isla Con­toy Na­tional Park in mar­ine and land eco­sys­tems of this is­land and sur­round­ing areas, and has been asked by the Sec­ret­ary of Tour­ism to re­gister the course with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment so that it be­comes part of the cer­ti­fic­a­tion of guides of the na­tional park and other nature pro­tec­ted areas.

AIC has con­tin­ued build­ing a strong re­la­tion­ship with the Un­der­wa­ter Ar­che­ology Sub Dir­ec­tion of the Na­tional In­sti­tute of Ar­che­ology and His­tory of Mex­ico (INAH), and helped provid­ing and co­ordin­at­ing lo­gist­ics for the field work un­der­taken in the un­der­wa­ter mu­seum pro­ject in Isla Con­toy, the train­ing of scuba guides in un­der­wa­ter ar­che­ology, and the re­search on sunken ship­wrecks in the mar­ine area in the prox­im­ity of Isla Mujeres and Isla Con­toy. AIC also acts as a link between the team of un­der­wa­ter ar­che­olo­gists from Kiel Uni­versity and the team of un­der­wa­ter ar­che­olo­gists from INAH.

AIC has re­ceived two small grants this year from the Ger­man found­a­tion Fu­touris to spon­sor the train­ing course on un­der­wa­ter ar­che­ology for scuba divers from Isla Mujeres, for the pro­duc­tion of rep­licas of his­tor­ical can­non and an­chors to be sunken in Isla Con­toy, and to dis­play in­form­a­tion on un­der­wa­ter ar­che­ology at the vis­it­ors cen­ter of Isla Con­toy Na­tional Park.