Since 1992, BARA researchers have been conducting extensive research among small-scale fishing communities in the Sonoran coast of the Gulf of California, Mexico. Studies on fishing communities focus on the political ecology of natural resource management, particularly on the relationship between BARA researchers began working in the Gulf of California with a study of the shrimp industry in the port of Guaymas. The study, partly sponsored by BARA, focused on issues of fisheries management, the comparison of industrial and artisanal fishing technologies, and the impact of regulatory enforcement, resource availability, and markets on fishing livelihoods (Vasquez-Leon).

The first funded project that was carried out by BARA researchers was a socioeconomic study of the Upper Gulf of California - Colorado River Delta Biosphere Reserve. The primary concern of this project was to evaluate and attempt to predict how the status and concept of a biosphere reserve would affect the lives and livelihoods of those residents and marine resource users (McGuire, Greenberg, and Vasquez-Leon)
[Link to "Maritime Community and Biosphere Reserve: Crisis and Response in the Upper Gulf of California" (McGuire and Greenberg, eds. 1993) http://www.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/mcguire.htm].

Endangered Species and Precarious Lives in the Upper Gulf of California (McGuire and Valdez 1997).

In 2001-2002 an NSF-funded project was conducted in the Mid-Gulf of California. This study generated data and information to understand the different dynamics of resource use in the Sonoran coast, allowing for comparisons in space and time with its lower and upper regions (Vasquez-Leon)

In 2002-2003 BARA conducted a comparative study funded by the Inter American Institute for Global Change - Small Grants Program. The project, entitled "Human Dimensions of Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Resources: An Integrated Assessment of Lessons from Three Co-management Initiatives in the Americas" focused on the relationship between ethnicity and class in the development of co-management schemes of coastal resources in southern Brazil and the Gulf of California. The project was done in collaboration with researchers in the Universidade Federal de Rio Grande du Sur, Brazil and the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, Mexico (Vasquez-Leon).

McGuire, T. 2003 "The River, the Delta, and the Sea. Journal of the Southwest 45(3):371-410.
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