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.

Guaymas Road Trip

So we headed out on our first road trip to see :
- the manager of WWF Gulf of California Mexico
- land use of the coast from Bahia de Kino to Guaymas
- to visit visit with Anna-Louisa Figaro, The director of Flora and Fauna of the Islands of the Gulf of California
- to see the Estero Tastiorta
- to see the city of Guaymas and San Carlos

We started the trip by visiting the WWF ( World Wildlife Foundation). Their office is in San Carlos which is 15 miles north of Guaymas. These are some of my notes from the WWF presentation are:
- 9 people work in their office
- Their focus is on responding to expansion of agriculture, deforestation, aquaculture and alteration of habitat
- They mentioned many projects that they are working on which include:
*education comic to inform fishermen about no-take zones, environmental impact of fishing, and marine environemtnal laws
*research on designing a new fishing hook that would be less likely to kill a sea turtle if caught
*research on how trawling effects environment in order to reduce bycatch
*new designed shrimp cages for artisanal fishers
- They also had specific targets which included specific species and ecosystems such as:
*coastal wetlands
*rocky bottoms and reefs
*sandy bottoms
*pelagic fishes
*Vaquita
*sea turtles
- Their strategies for protecting these targets where:
* effective management of Marine Protected Areas
*Regulation and regionalization of small scale fisheries
*watershed management
*aquaculture management

After this meeting we went into the port of Guymas to see a historical port and the industries that are there.
We started at the central city square where there were statues of all the Mexican presidents that had been from Guaymas. Here we got a little background on the history of the city. Guaymas before european presence was Yaqui territory. The rest of the timeline is as follows:

- 1539: Ulloa claimed port for Spain
-1500s: explores secured ports in Mexico
-1600-1700: jesuit priests established important missions in Guaymas
- 1700s: agriculutural growth and fishing
-1800s: railroad stop established in Guaymas, population reaches 4,000
-1900s: industrial growth
-1960: PEMEX oil refinery/electricity generator built in city
- 1970: fiberglass pangas introduced to fishing in the area ( before this wooden pangas were used = quick evolution of panga technology)
-now: 200,000 population, imporant martime transport base, navy base, fish processing

Guaymas is an important division between the northern and southern gulf ecosystems. ( city hall)
From the city plaza we walked to where we could see the harbor better. From here we talked about the harbor and PEMEX station but I'm going to jump to the sewage "treatment" ponds because I think this is one of the most interesting things about Guaymas

Guaymas has city sewage plumbing but no sewage treatment center. Initially, before 2000, the city was directly dumping all city sewage in the ocean but this obviously became a sanitation problem. So in 2000, they decided to sacrifice a estuary for treatment ponds which are only primary treatment of the sewage. This means they only remove large objects, sand, and sedimentation.
There are three of these ponds which lie on a negative incline out to the ocean. These ponds filter the 11 cubic ton of sewage that is dumped into them each year. It is sad to think that before 2000 this valley was an estuary and sanctuary to many migratory birds. The stench of these ponds is indescribable. I'll I can say is that the only kind of creature that enjoys this kind of habitat is :
( a pig)
There is no protection for this kind of treatment against natural disasters and in the past Guaymas has had sewage breaches when Hurricane pass through. From Guaymas we went to back to San Carlos.

The next day we met with Anna-Louisa Figaro who is the The director of Flora and Fauna of the Islands of the Gulf of California.

Rather than write the actual notes from her talk I think that it is more important to mention my impression of the talk. Coming out of the meeting, my first thought was that conservation efforts all over the world need dynamic and engaging personalities like Anna Louisa- Figaro. She has been able to bring together many different groups which include NGOs and many different governmental agencies and has fostered communication within these entities in order to make conservation efforts happen...this is definitely a large light a hope in what what can be a depressing cloud of failure to protect our natural resources. She is also able to look at the whole picture of what is involved with a conservation effort such as: the research of natural resources, the resources themselves, the community affecting the resources, the community involvement protecting these resources, governmental enforcement to protect these resources, community education etc.

After meeting with Anna Lousia Figaro we went to Tastiota which is a small community on the coast which has been devastated by big business aquaculture. Tastiota is a village of 30-70 people which lies on an estuary. This estuary is home to 17 different species of nesting birds, crabs, the nursery for many different invertebrates.

Aquaculture is exploded out of the estuary to the point that saying it is disgusting is an understatement. Even though the aquaculture hasn't bulldozed the estuary itself they are still dumping their pond water into the estuary. This is causing sediment build up within the estuary. When we walked out to the ocean we could see the darkened waters that were flowing from the estuary.The people of Tastiota have traditionally fished for crab out in the ocean and done very small scale oyster farming. However they are not able to do this anymore because they are no longer to get their boats out to the ocean due to the sediment build up in the estuary. They are also not able to farm oysters because the oysters are dying out due to the fact that they are filter feeders.

This town is fighting back. Even though this estuary fell through the cracks of environmental conservation it can still be saved by the people of Tastiota. They have hired a lawyer to try to take on the big corporations who are ruining their livelihood.
(snowy egret)

After this trip I came away with many feelings of hopefulness from the dynamic environmental leaders that we met but also sadness from the environmental disasters that we saw such as the the Tastiota aquaculture and Guaymas dump. This trip showed me that there is a pressing need for biological research of coastal ecosystems and a need for NGO involvement for protecting coastal ecosystems.

I also had a conversation at Tastiota which is important to reiterate here:
I also feel that we no longer can wait around for communication to happen between governmental agencies, NGOs and scientists. We do not have the time for people to start caring about the natural resources that we are exploiting. We need change now or the opportunity to save some of the most biologically diverse environments will fade away. Watching aquaculture farms take over the desert breaks my heart. It blows my mind away how people can be so driven by money and greed. We are facing a tragedy of the commons on every scale by our loss of global natural habitat. The future is dependent on radical action to conserve the organisms and ecosystems that we haven't already destroyed.

Beginning of Coastal Development Unit / La Borbolla Shrimp Aquaculture Plant

Today was our introduction to the coastal development unit. This unit is composed of issues dealing with aquaculture, agriculture, commercial development, industrial development, residential use, and tourism. This field trip was mostly concerned with aquaculture. At the beginning of the day we visited the plant that grows the shrimp larvae.

Then we headed off to the shrimp aquaculture farm:
( These are the empty shrimp ponds)
At the shrimp farm/plant we were given a tour of the whole process of how they raise the shrimp by the manager of the plant, Cesar Patinlla. We were inundated with information about
- periods of harvest ( one harvest per year)
- how shrimp they grow per hectare ( 5 metric tons/hectare)
- 360 hectares at this farm divided into 55 ponds
- water input and output
- etc
I focused on environmental impact, my report is :

What are the environmental laws that need to be complied with?

• Sanitary regulation laws for shrimp larvae
• There is a good environmental practice certificate that the government agency SEGARPA is in charge of. Currently this certificate is optional and the La Borbolla Farm is only one of five to have this certificate.
• SEMARNAT also has water output laws
• In order to get the good practice certificate, CIAD, a independent lab, conducts water testing for heavy metals, cauliform, pH levels, antibiotics, and suspended particulates
• CIAD tests at beginning, middle and end of every harvest. It costs 30,000 pesos per testing session
• FDA requires that any antibiotics that have been applied must out of the shrimps bodies within 30 days before they are harvested
• At the moment, the farm is in the process of complying with European laws which are much higher than the US standards in order to be able to sell the product to these markets.

What steps need to be taken to comply (how many employees )?

They have two hired biologists plus a manager oversees the testing operations.

What is done?

These biologists conduct tests once a week for bacterial levels of the water and of the shrimp. Due to this weekly testing, the farm might apply antibiotics for diseased ponds or either flush or aerate the ponds to change oxygen levels. They also check the shrimp for any types of diseases.

Once the harvesting has begun the biologists move to the processing plant to monitor shrimp quality once they have been packaged.

Environmental impacts of the operation:

i. Water quality and nutrient input to the ocean/estuary ecosystem

· Larvae plant needs federal permit to intake water for plant use

· The La Borbolla Farm is a semi-intensive system which refers to whether the plant aerates their ponds or not. This farm does not do aeration unless it is an emergency. This limits their overall production levels, yet saves them the costs of running aerators constantly.

· There are federal output nutrient laws that regulate how much excess nutrients can be put into the open ocean

ii. Additives and their impact (antibiotics, fertilizers)

· They use inorganic fertilizers to grow phytoplankton, which is fed upon by the shrimp larvae

· Antibiotics that are used to treat any diseases that the shrimp may have are supposedly only active for a couple of hours to a few days depending on the disease they are treating and environmental conditions.

iii. Habitat alteration

· This farm is unique in that it was developed not in conjunction with the presence of an estuary; it is completely on solid land and a mile or two inland from the ocean. It was the first of its kind in the world when it was created ten years ago.

· The input water, from the open ocean, comes to the plant from man made canals that are dredged often.

iv. Impacts on wildlife

· Many birds are attracted to the aquaculture farm especially seagulls, terns, pelicans, and other seabirds. The seagulls can only reach the dead or sick shrimp at the top of the pond to feed on. Thus the farm uses the seagulls as an indicator of a problem in the pond.

· The farm has also had a problem with larger birds that would eat the shrimp out of the pond, chiefly the brown pelican. They used to shoot these birds until they found it ineffective and against the law.

· Since this aquaculture plant is not in an estuarian environment it has allowed estuaries close by to continue to provide critical habitat for developing invertebrates and migrating birds.

· Output waters that may have higher levels of nutrients may cause algal blooms that can lead to fish die outs in the open ocean due to oxygen depletion

We then moved onto the processing plant so that we could see the full shrimp producing process. We had to dress up for this event :
Here at the plant we saw the shrimp being deheaded, froazen and packaged. The workers are paid 120 pesos ( 12 dollars) a day plus 2 pesos ( 20 cents) per 5 lb tray of shrimp that they dehead.

In order to show you the process of us seing this plant I will walk you through the plant by pictures:

- First we had to wash our hands and walk through this disinfactant


- We then walked into the deheading room


- I can not imagine having this job and being paid so little, it is important to note that most of these workers come from southern mexico due to the fact that the people from Kino and the surrounding area won't work for the wages offered.



- After they get deheaded they are sized by weight by a machine


- And then they are put into trays

- Frozen

- And shipped of to an american grocery store near you

Isla San Pedro Martir

We finally made it out to San Pedro Martir! After having a couple of horribly windy days we finally get a calm smooth water day. My presentation was on San Pedro Martir so I was excited to get out to the island that I had been learning so much about.

At the dock (8:00am) at the water temperature was 69.5 degrees Fahrenheit. There was only 2 trawlers to be seen in the bay however there were quite a few interesting birds just off the boat ramp such as a snowy egret and magnificent frigate birds.

To get out to San Pedro Martir you have to pass between Isla Alcatraz and Turner Island heading south west. As you head out we reached a ridge of a underwater mountain where the depth was 124 ft and then the depth from there gets much deeper as you keep heading out.

Around 9:10 we saw a whale from the baleen family which we thought was either a fin whale or a Bryde's Whale. The whale was surfacing at 10 minute intervals and was moving quite quickly so we did not get a good chance to observe it but it was still so amazing to be able to see a whale at all. The depth was 400ft when we saw the whale. ( San Pedro Martir off in the distance)

As we moved closer to San Pedro Martir we saw around 100 individuals of long-nose common dolphins. This group of about 100 individuals was interesting because they were very spread out which we haven't seen before. The depth here was 680 ft.

We finally make it to the island and the water here is a frigid 64 degrees. We were greeted by the sea lions :



San Pedro Martir is extremely important to nesting seabirds which include Red-billed Tropicbirds, blue-footed boobies, and brown pelicans. . The island is unique in that it has no sandy beaches but instead is covered in steep rhyolite and basement rock cliffs.The birds however have been negatively affected by invasive rats that were introduced to the island by guano miners in the late 1880's. Luckily, there is a eradication program planned to go through next week which the class is going to help out with. This eradication has been 5-8 years in the planning so it is very exciting. As we circled the island I got a tutoral on the spanish translation of many ocean organisms:

whale - ballena
sea cuccumber - pepino de mar
fish - pescado
dolphin - delfin
sea lion - lobo marino
lobster - langosta
octopus - pulpo
crab - cangrejo
clam - almeja
eel - anguila
sea turtle - canguama
sea urchin - erizo
shark - tiburon

As we passed the south west point we went out into the San Pedro Martir Trench to try to see Sperm Whales which are known to pass through this trench. As we waited to see if the whales were here we had Kevin's presentation on trenches in the gulf. He told us that the San Pedro Martir trench is 3,000 feet deep. At the bottom of this trench lies some of the newest land in the world as it extrudes from a crack in the earth's surface. Most of the trenches in the gulf are narrow however still very deep. One of the deepest trenches in the gulf is the Guaymas tench at 6,000 ft which is in the southern gulf .

After awhile we gave up on seeing the whales since we had already seen one in the morning and decided that we didn't want to waste anymore time when we could be snorkeling so we headed back to San Pedro Martir to snorkel.

This snorkel session was by far the best so far. I saw my first green sea turtle and the sea lions were amazing to swim with.

We headed back around the island after our session and waved goodbye to the brown and blue-footed boobies of the island. This was by far my favorite trip.

Isla San Esteban

Today we try again for Isla San Esteban. I am starting to get very used to this route as we pass Turner Island and Isla Cholludo. The water temperature at the boat launch today is 73.8 degrees Fahrenheit. We count 12 shrimp trawlers out in the bay and 1 sport fisher boat off the coast of Tiburon.

We saw a group of Longbeak Common Dolphins again today in the San Esteban trench. We took down the citing info which included: temperature (68.3), time ( 9:23), beaufort scale ( 1), depth ( >2,000ft), location ( San Esteban Trench), # of individuals ( 15-20), associated species (brown boobies), and behavior ( foraging). We assume that the dolphins are often here to forage due to the high productivity. This high productivity is associated with the upwelling up currents.

Today we also had a Seri elder, Manuel Flores Flores along with us. As we were off the coast of San Esteban he explained to us that the Seri have sacred marine spots which are usually situated in the confluences of currents. Off of Isla San Esteban lies one of these confluences. In the spring these currents create a physical barrier between Isla Tiburon and Isla San Esteban. So back in the day when the Serris would travel in boats called balsas they would use songs to rally courage against these currents, to change bad weather, to keep up stamina and just for fun. Manuel is on the Council of Ancients and is specifically fluent in the seri songs ( only 1/3 elders left who know all of the songs). One of the songs he sang for us was the Song of the Great Tide.


( Sorry that this video is sideways, I'm still learning to use my video-camera)
Other songs that Manuel sang for us include: Song for future good weather, Song for sea lion and shrimp competition, festival song, and The Concluding Song.

Other things that we learned about the seris include the fact that they consider the Leatherback turtle a member of their tribe. There were also fluid Seri population movements between Isla San Esteban and Isla Tiburon which were caused by resource availability.

Once we got onto the island we were greeted by a group of military. They were stationed on the island and were patrolling the any boat activity. They were as nice as military can be and did not give us much trouble.

We unloaded from the boat and took a short walk up to a spot were we could sit and learn more about the natural history of the island. We sat under a giant cardon. This picture includes a close up of some of the arms.

San Esteban has 2 minor campsites one for winter and one for summer.The rest of the San Esteban information is included in the handout.

From Emma's presentation we learned more information on the Seri presence on the island including the fact that the Seri camps were often found in places of non-permanent water sources. The group of Seris that lived here were known for their bravery and ability to live in harsh conditions. They lived here until the 1970s after that they were driven off the island by the military.
After the presentation we headed back to the boat to continue around the island. On the walk back we found San Esteban Chuckawalla which is endemic to the island.
As we followed the southern coast we saw small beaches with sea lions on them. These small beaches are used for mating spots by the sea lions. At the south western point there is Playa El Cascajal where the sea lions hang out. San Esteban has the largest sea lion colony in the Gulf of California. The waters off of this sand bar were filled mackerel. We rounded the sand bar and came upon a large dugg-out in the side of the island.
After this we went to our snorkeling spot. At first I was a little hesitant to get into the water with sea lions swimming around us but once I got in my fears subsided. It was interesting to be able to compare the snorkel spot from Las Cruces to the one here. Here the water depth seemed more deeper and less tide-pool like. I feel like the area of Las Cruces had a variety of different organisms specializing in areas of different depth but that the total ecosystem was compacted into a smalled total depth. Whereas at the San Esteban site these layers of the ecosystem where more clearly defined. I also was able to identify some organisms such as the King Angelfish unlike at Las Cruces where I was purely observing without the knowledge to id fish.

After a very productive snorkel session we headed out around the last section of the island. It was interesting to note the CONANP (La Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas) sign that was put up on the what was thought to be the fishing camp. Unfortunately the place that they put it in is not the fishing camp but instead a site of part of the sea lion colony. In oder to read the small print "do not land" sign you must land thus disturbing the sea lions. Often when the colonies are disturbed the dominant males will head to the water first trampling the pups. Thus this is an example of a environmental government agency being completely out of touch with reality.

As we headed back to the mainland we passed a resident group of Bottlenose Dolphins off the coast of Isla Tiburon.



( Wait till the second part of the video to see the dolphins.)