Shrimp Aquaculture Larvae Plant

At a pre-note to this journal: This field trip took place 2 hours after we got back from our shrimp trawler experience where we did not sleep the whole night. Thus I was not the most enthused to be going to a shrimp larvae production plant. :) Oh I also did not have time to transfer my photos from the shrimp trawler night from my camera to my computer, but hopfeully later on I will find pictures to add.

As with all of the other Aquaculture process this plant imputs large amounts of antibiotics and chemicals back into the ocean. During this trip it was hard for me to compare the impact that the trawlers have with a plants like this one. Even though I want to say that aquaculture is less ecological impactful than trawling, I cant say that it is an alternative that I could support.

At the end of the day I feel that shrimp are a product that really should not be consumed because its harvest whether wild or farmed is so ecologically destructfull.

Trawler Outing

The trawler experience was something I had been looking forward to during the whole month and it finally arrived. We loaded up on the boat around 3 pm and moved over close to Isla Tiburon for the first trawl around 6 pm.

The trawler that we were on had two trawls off each side. These trawls have otter boards which weight down the trawl and drag along the ocean floor. In this diagram it shows the trawl coming off the back of the boat whereas on the boat I was on there were two of them and they came off the sides. This diagram shows the general idea of the net.

When we first arrived on the boat we got a tour:
( the cabin room with steering wheel and navigational devices)
( the engine)

( eating table/kitchen)

At 6pm we started our first trawl with the dropping of the otter boards.



The trawls drag four hours at a time. So at 10pm we took up our first catch. I should mention that shrimp trawling is done at night because this is the time that shrimp are most active.

At 10pm the catch was brought on board



The following things happen when the catch is brought on board:
- the catch is sorted by pulling out all of the shrimp ( blue, brown and japanese varieties)
- large bycatch is put into baskets ( large triggerfish, sharks, large rays etc)
- the rest of the catch is scrapped overboard
- shrimp are deheaded by hand and sorted by size
- shrimp and selected large bycatch is frozen in the hull of boat

( Bycatch is fish and/or other marine life that are incidentally caught with the targeted species)



At first the class was carefully trying to put the bycatch back to sea but after awhile we realize that there really is no point and we start to carelessly scrap the bycatch back into the sea.

All night there are hug male sea lions that follow the boat and eat some of the bycatch that is thrown back over board; there are also thousands of birds that swarm the waters around the boat in order to try to get a free meal.



Throughout the whole night there are also changas which are mini trawlers which are pulled up every 30 min. These mini-trawlers are to periodically check to see how much shrimp they are getting. If they are getting too little in the changas they will pull the big trawl early and move somewhere else.




During the third trawl of the night we caught a sea turtle. Trawlers are supposed to use turtle exclusion devises (TEDs) on their nets so that this doesn't happen. However the TEDs end up getting clogged with fish and thus the fishermen obtain less catch so they don't use them. There isn't any enforcement of this when the boats are out fishing at night. Thus the fishermen will put them on when they go back to the port where there is enforcement and take them off when they are fishing.

During the night I was so overwhelmed by how much bycatch there was a how few shrimp there were. We would pull up these hug nets of fish and only end up keeping 3-4 small baskets of shrimp. During this class I have had so many oppertunities to snorkel in such beautiful environments with such amazing organisms. To see these same organisms bruised/suffocating/ and dying on the deck of the boat was alot to take in. Even though I may seem to be taking an animal rights position to this issue I want to convey, even more, the need for us to intrinsically value the marine ecosystem as a whole. This practice could be compared to clear-cutting a whole forest and then picking out all of the bears. These trawler are scrapping the oceans clean and then putting most of the caught back half dead.
Some of these organisms were:

(scorpian fish)
( Sea horse) ( loggerhead sea turtle)




All of this caught just for a few baskets of these:


90 percent of Mexico's shrimp is exported to the United States. In your local grocery stores you have no idea where the shrimp is coming from. There is a good chance it could be coming from a trawler. This trawling industry exists because of its demand. American consumption of shrimp allows trawling to continue.

For my last note I want to add that these pictures and videos don't come close to fully depicting the devastation of what trawling is. It's hard for me explain the sadness that I have knowing that people are able inflict such destruction upon the oceans. It would be easy to say that I hate the fishermen that work on the trawlers but I can't say this because they are just scraping by and trying to feed their families. They bare a portion of the burden but so does every american who buys shrimp.

I leave you with the video of our last trawl of the night which also brought up the most catch but still the same small amount of shrimp:

Fishing Beach Walk

In order to get a bettter idea of what the small scale fishing is like in Kino, we took a walk along the beach in Kino Viejo where the fishing boats come in. We stopped by several boats to see what they caught: (sting ray)
( trigger fish and blue swimming crab)
After looking at some boats we went up to one of the permissionarios. A permissionario is a middeman between the fishermen and the buyer. Permissionarios need permits for the boats that they cover( 80 pesos ?) and they have to pay an exploitation fee ( 64 pesos). I found that the permit system was very confusing due to the fact that not all of the permits need to renewed every year. I did not understand whether the permissionario had to pay permit on each boat or whether it was species specific.

Some of the prices that I accumulated are :
(10 peso = 1 US dollar)
Sierra Mackerel- 8 pesos/kilo
Squid - 2-3 pesos/kilo
Manta Ray - 10 pesos/kilo

I also found the different sizes of the nets interesting ( mesh size)
8 inch- flounder
6 inch- crab
2 inch- sierra mackerel
7 inch - skates/rays/sharks

At the end of this visit I understood the basics of how the fishermen are all under one of the permissionarios which there are 8 of in Kino. There are around 100 pangas and 300-400 fishermen in Kino. I was somewhat confused on the details of the permit system. It was hard to get an idea if this system is really working for the fishermen or not or whether they liked it more than the cooperative system.