July 22, 2008—The sun warms a patch of mangrove forest near Mexico's Espíritu Santo island last June in the Gulf of California.

The loss of mangrove forests to coastal development is threatening the region's multimillion-dollar fishing industry, according to a new study.

Around Mexico's Gulf of California—between the Baja California peninsula and the west coast of the Mexican mainland—mangroves are being destroyed to make way for high-end tourism resorts, according to the report by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Researchers found that in the Gulf of California 2.5 acres (1 hectare) of coastal mangrove support an average of U.S. $37,500 worth of commercial fish and crab species annually.

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