Warrior swimming crab fishing zones along the southwest Baja California peninsula, Mexico Mauricio Ramírez-Rodríguez * , Juan Carlos Castro-Salgado Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas del Instituto Polit ecnico Nacional, Av. IPN s/n, Col Playa Palo de Santa Rita, La Paz, Baja California Sur, 23096, Mexico article info Article history: Received 13 July 2016 Received in revised form 25 November 2016 Accepted 4 December 2016 Keywords: Callinectes bellicosus Spatial management Small-scale fisheries Fleet dynamics abstract To improve the management of the warrior swimming crab (Callinectes bellicosus, Stimpson 1859) fishery along the west coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, catch, economic value and trip ticket frequency data, from 1998 to 2010, were analyzed by month and locality. Based on the geographic locations of fishing localities and their use frequencies, five fishing zones were identified. The relative contributions to the regional catch, economic value and frequency of use, as well as catch trends and fishing seasons, revealed differences between zones. The proposed zones can be used to design spatial management units that facilitate the monitoring of fishing efforts and evaluate the impacts of these efforts on the resource, economic performance and interactions with other fisheries. We discuss the advantages of the method used and its potential for identifying benchmarks, mainly related to fleet dynamics, in the absence of information regarding resource dynamics. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), almost 58% of worldwide marine fish population are fully exploited and 31% are overexploited (FAO, 2016). Mexico follow this trend with 70% of marine resources fully exploited and, 20% over- exploited (Arreguín-S anchez, 2006). This data show the need of fisheries management and the importance to use the available in- formation looking for sustainable fisheries (Salas et al., 2007; Fern andez et al., 2011; Ramírez-Rodríguez, 2011). Fisheries management demands in-depth knowledge of how fishing fleets operate, including efficiency and potential temporal and spatial effects on the resource (Hilborn and Walters, 1992). Thus, identification of management zones must be based on bio- logical, economic and social factors related to resource availability, operating costs, product prices and infrastructure for landing, processing and marketing (Ramírez-Rodríguez, 2011). In general, fisheries regionalization aims to address management re- quirements or opportunities, for example, the fishing zones defined by the FAO for statistical purposes or those designated as marine protected areas (Sanders et al., 2011). For the swimming crab (Callinectes bellicosus, Stimpson 1859; C. arcuatus, Ordway 1863; and C. toxotes, Ordway 1863) fishery in the Mexican Pacific, fishing regions are defined by the contributions of each coastal state to the country's total swimming crab catch (Fig. 1). This is a small-scale fishery and, according to the National Fisheries Chart, it is at its peak sustainable level in the Gulf of California states; however, it has potential for further development in other states (SAGARPA, 2012). In 2013, the Mexican states along the Pacific coast reported a total catch of 17,046 t of swimming crab (SAGARPA, 2013). The state of Baja California Sur (BCS) was the third largest producer, contributing 2.9% to the Pacific's total catch, after Sinaloa (66.6%) and Sonora (27.2%). The other eight Mexican Pacific states contributed a combined 3.3%. Although BCS has coastline on the Gulf of California, warrior swimming crab C. bellicosus fishing pri- marily occurs in or near three coastal lagoon systems on the west coast of the Baja California peninsula: Guerrero Negro-Ojo de Lie- bre, San Ignacio and Magdalena-Almejas Bay (Fig. 1)(Gonz alez- Ramírez et al., 1996; Ramírez-F elix et al., 2003; Cisneros-Mata et al., 2014). Because of the important production in Sinaloa and Sonora, the Mexican government established a swimming crab management plan for those estates without include any management action for BCS. The plan includes monitoring, evaluation, bioeconomic studies and socioeconomic studies (SAGARPA, 2014). Although the plan * Corresponding author. E-mail address: mramirr@ipn.mx (M. Ramírez-Rodríguez). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ocean & Coastal Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2016.12.004 0964-5691/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Ocean & Coastal Management 136 (2017) 133e138