The MAR saga.

( Meso-American Reefs)

I like to be a Storyteller for justice, free speech and sometime just for fun.

INTRODUCTION

My name is Simone Rossini, I was born on February 16, 1966, I am a native of Pesaro, Italy, an ancient Roman port on the coast of the Adriatic Sea.

As a child, I used to dream about the ocean and its marine life, the natural encyclopedia was my fav. book and my main source of discoveries. I grow up on a border school 1969/1979 originally was the Villa of Cardinal Filippo Guastavillani, builded in 1573, one of a kind villa, was later donated to the University of Bologna, the oldest one in the world, the Cardinal was the nephew of Pope Gregorio XIII, the one of the Gregorian Calendar.?

I remember very well to have the ability to think what I wanted to dream before going to sleep and dream it when and how I wanted, the dream began always the same and it was the Pinocchio story in the part where ,with Geppetto, they were swallowed by a whale….in my dreams we could dive with total freedom, without equipment and without problems of air or time, without anything, it was a unique space where everything was possible.I realized then that the more I dreamed, the more my fantasy enhanced and increased my curiosity, growing a genuine enthusiasm for aquatic activities, science and art.?I was unconsciously forging the foundations of the destiny of my adult life.

1.THE JOURNEY

It would take too long to tell now the story of my childhood and the villa, so will jump straight to 1989 & my journey to Mexico. It is relevant to start mentioning the free "Concert for Europe" of Pink Floyd in Venice, because it was the first Mass Tourism event to experiment the city response and it was in part sponsored by the Cruise Ship companies, that would promote their world wide business at the coming 4 month long Expo 2000 in Venice. Wow free Pink Floyd concert, the show was mounted on top of the water in front of Piazza San Marco, it was insane! The??Italian Government and Venice authority as well were using the city and the people for their experiment, very few knew it or care about it, that was July 1989, officially the beginning of the biggest mass tourism business in the world, while Europe was just about to become the European Community with an unified market and? currency, the Euro.

Two hundred thousand people invaded Venice for a concert of 90 minutes and of course, the city collapsed within less than 24 hours, no drinking waters, no toilet service and no food, all restaurants and shop shut down, it was really insane.??The concert was broadcasted via satellite and over 100 millions people watched on TV.?

The?biggest issue was the toilet service, or better said, no toilet service, that caused disgusting scenery “nei canali” in the water channels, it was a shame.??After the disaster Venice did not host the Expo 2000 that would have the same amount of people as the Pink Floyd concert but for 4 months, imagine how that would have destroyed the city of Venice. Venetian people said no thanks, we don’t need that, Cruise ship plans changed somewhere else, the Mexican Caribbean become their next goal…?

35 years later Cozumel Island is the second Cruise ship port of the world,? next to Miami.

What a strange coincidence, after the concert in Venice, I was 23 years old when in October 1989 , I moved from Italy to the Mexican Caribbean and started a career? in Cozumel Island, working on boats as underwater photographer, dive guide, dive instructor and scuba gear technician to evolve with the years, into an action cameraman, a creative writer, producer and director, video journalist , activist and environmental educator, I made up a word, only for all of this, is Aqua performer, but the best description of myself would be : a? Renaissance man.

Blue waters took me away, a lifetime??passion? began and?gave me the chance to learn??very many things, actually, way beyond my expectations.

I had then the chance to??become who I am today and to be extremely happy during the process, I also learned to appreciate everything good that came to me and even to accept negatives moments here and there.?

Life is a journey, for some of us, a never ending learning path , we can read the same books and eventually we will end up with the same information, ?knowledge instead, only come with personal??experience.

I learned about coral reefs habitat and marine life behavior mostly by observation, I also learned that one could be observing the environment and be looking around or watching something and not truly see it until naturally and deeply connected??with the surrounding element.?

Over 30 years of diving, nearly 15 thousand hours of bottom time or more…monitoring Cozumel’s reefs the whole time with many different underwater camera gear, producing multimedia projects and products catering to conservation, shooting photograph and video and taking notes of everything could enrich my understanding of life on the reefs, for three wonderful decades.?

This is the story, on a chronological order, of the events that are part of the history of Cozumel’s and the rest of the MAR coral reefs degradation, from 1989 until today, these are my personal experiences, I like to be a storyteller for justice, free speech and sometime for fun.?

2.Artisanal Fishing??transitioning to Mass Tourism? July 1996.

The Yucatan Peninsula is the last land emerged from the waters of the Atlantic, the youngest of all??Oceans and the newest and latest Reef Barrier System, the Mesoamerican??reefs it’s known also as the Great Mayan Reef, with one thousand kilometers of discontinued reef patch, that stretch from the Northeastern tip of the Yucatan peninsula to the south, all the way down to the Gulf of Honduras.

It’s also the only peninsula on earth that is pointing north, all others are pointing south,??this itself makes the Yucatan special and unique, a privileged place where the sidereal manto is a true spectacle, which could suggest also why and how the Mayan were so knowledgeable about the stars, the sun and the moon, as to calculate and create their own calendar.

The moon and the tied cycle are the Fishermen guide to check fish activities and divers started to use the same information, they also share the reefs with different??objectives and activities, however, both have one more thing in common, their activities are weather conditioned , the cycle of the moon and the tied chart is what both are looking at, to choose the best day for fish action, either to fish??or just to dive and take photos.

As the tourist population grows, the demand for fish consumption grows as well.

For the authority overfishing was the reality to deal with, in 1996, on one side the fishermen were simply claiming their right to keep fishing not respecting the zonificatión proposed by??the secretariat of environment , while the diving community was starting to raise their voice up, to conserve life on the reefs of Cozumel, a clear conflict of interest.?

The authority??never really managed to eradicate illegal fishing, it never was and it will never be easy to persuade fishermen not to fish, fishing it’s in their nature and they all love it, they were there before for entire generations and even after July 1996 when Mexican government??declared the Marine Park Natural Protected Area.?

The, now, illegal fishing continued anyhow specially down south away from the hotels.?If you are asking yourself why, keep in mind that politicians wants people votes and back then, fishermen unions were powerful, most population in the region were fishermen families.

Time of changes, everything was happening fast, fishermen were entitled with tourist permit, that shortly end up in the hand of opportunists??shady characters mediating and trafficking with them, creating a black market that still goes on today 27 years after, what was costing 600 pesos for the whole permit , now it??cost more than $5000 us per seat not per permit…due the math….??the permits??were given to the fishermen with the possibility to buy the “right of use” back from them, a legal trick with the complicity of the authority and all is needed is a notary, so that move, generate ever since a black market , it??is a chaos anyhow still today, why ? It takes more than a permit to change a fisherman into a dive operator and they knew it, today all permits or most of them belong to people not native of the island and in many case foreigners that bought them somehow on the edge of legal action, a limbo, where the law cannot be fully applied, so that today 243 boat have permits but this does not prevent the other 300 that do not have permit, to access the marine park passing by far its capacity limits, that’s why is chaos

To establish new rules without supervision or without enforcing the law, it’s simply a waste of time, it’s useless, as nothing will change, fishing was still going on every early morning and at night, certainly,??not a brilliant idea??to plan a marine park with two groups that had opposite interests and activities next to each other, specially, with??poor or none enforcement of the law, it was more likely an act of governmental??paternalism, please do not fish in the park ok ? That was it..and only once in a while they were stopping them but without much consequences…a paper’s sanctuary, fishermen??where still there everyday and even some of the dive operator were fishing and having lobster, crabs and shellfish for lunch on the beach…a reality in strong contrast with new rules.

• Coincidently in 1997 I was the chief of field, monitoring and research for the first study of the “Feeding behaviors of Hawksbill turtle in the reefs of Cozumel” the first time in Mexico and first research for the recent created National Marine Park Reefs of Cozumel. That year we managed to identify 7 type of sponges that Hawksbill turtle feed on, we also realized they were moving around all the time, the feeding areas were changing to not feed always on the same sponges, they were kind of trimming down sponges in some areas and then leave the sponges that were actually kept alive and recovering, regrowing from the turtle bite. Corals, sponges and Hawksbill turtle have a close relationship, juveniles Hawksbill turtle for example, can feed on encrusting sponges that grow behind and underneath and around some ramified corals species, somehow a sort of gardener?task that show their connection and the important role Hawksbill turtle have, helping to keep coral reef habitat healthy and in balance.

?The MAR saga will.continue next week: DON'T MISS IT!!

"1998 THE FIRST BLEACHING??EVENT"?.