Luis Bourillón

Luis Bourillón Moreno is a renowned Mexican biologist with over four decades of experience at the intersection between marine conservation and community-based fisheries management. He has devoted his life to working with fisheries producers around Mexico, supporting locally based efforts and initiatives to implement a variety of tools, from the first Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) fisheries certifications (lobsters, sardines, tunas) to the establishment of the first voluntary fishing refuge zones (no-fishing zones), collaborating with small-scale fishing cooperatives in the states of Baja California Sur, Baja California, Yucatán and Quintana Roo. Luis was also instrumental in creating important organizations and coalitions of multiple stakeholders to spearhead these efforts. He co-founded Comunidad y Biodiversidad, AC (COBI) in 1999, one of Mexico’s leading community-based marine conservation NGOs, and the Kanan Kay Alliance in 2011, a collaboration platform to implement networks of fishing refuge zones in the Yucatan Peninsula. Recently (2021-2025) coordinated Impacto Colectivo por la Pesca y Acuacultura Mexicanas (ICPMX), a national collective impact platform focused on sustainability in the Mexican seafood sector. He currently works as an independent consultant, advising fishing and aquaculture organizations and seafood supply-chain companies on their sustainability and social responsibility strategies. He has served as a sustainability advisor for COMEPESCA (the Mexican Council for the Promotion of Fisheries and Aquaculture Products) since 2021 and co-created Mexico’s first seafood sustainability movement, “Pesca Con Futuro”. He firmly believes in the power of markets and communities to drive change in the fisheries and aquaculture sector, aiming to produce positive social, economic, and environmental outcomes. Luis earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a master’s degree in ecology and natural resource conservation from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM-Guaymas Campus), and a PhD in natural resource management from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, USA.