El Niño Could Destroy Ecuador's Shrimp Farms

A worker gracefully twirls a net over the canal. The net unfurls as it falls, landing spread out in a wide circle on the water. The man pulls it back to shore and shakes out his catch—a few small crabs and fish, and about a dozen medium-sized shrimp, bouncing several feet off the ground in a panic. Perhaps they know instinctively they are destined to be sold as food, on the local market or around the world.

Shrimp farming is by far the largest driver of economic activity in the Rio Chone estuary in coastal Ecuador. It's also a major source of environmental degradation via the removal of mangrove forests and other factors. Now, in what was the worst-hit area in South America during the last strong El Niño in 1997-98, the shrimp industry is once again at risk from and a contributor to potential destruction from an impending El Niño.

In the 1970s and 80s, shrimp farms exploded in the region, bringing in much-needed money and employment. The boom also caused big problems for the local ecosystem, however, resulting in the destruction of as much as 90 percent of the mangrove trees in the estuary. That meant smaller habitats for wild marine life, and more vulnerability to storms.

Sure enough, when El Niño brought excessively heavy rains in 1998, there were few trees left to prevent erosion, and massive mudslides struck the region. Many shrimp farms were washed away, along with houses, roads, and human lives. Now, nearly two decades later, the industry and the communities have recovered nicely, just in time for a rainy season that is predicted to be as strong as the 1998 event.

In the meantime, business continues as usual. "I am worried, but I don't let it get to me," says Gonzalo Rodriguez, one of the local shrimp producers. "Whatever's gonna happen will happen, no matter what."

Rodriguez, 49, grew up in Bahía de Caráquez, the coastal city at the mouth of the Rio Chone, admiring his friends' fathers who operated shrimp farms. His family took a different route, however, moving to Brooklyn so he could attend school in the United States. When he finished his education, he started a trucking company in New Jersey, but never gave up his shrimping dreams. "Whatever I made, I saved, so I could come back," he says.

In the mid-1990s, Rodriguez purchased his first 20-hectare farm near Bahía. Shortly afterward, the industry was nearly wiped out by white spot virus. "Everything died. You couldn't grow anything," he says. He was able to take advantage of the downturn to purchase more farms at a discounted price, and currently owns about 200 hectares.

In addition to his farms, the entrepreneur also owns a laboratory on the coast, where he grows shrimp larvae to use in his own ponds and sell to other operators. In the concrete building, there are six large plastic-lined tanks, with pumps constantly supplying oxygen, where the tiny larvae grow for about 20 days before they are big enough to move to the ponds. Rodriguez sells them by the million, for about $1,600 or $1,700 a batch.

When he is ready to seed his own larvae, he brings about 3 million with him on the bumpy, twisting drive 21 kilometers up the river to where his property is located. All along the way, dozens of other rectangular shrimp ponds line the water.

At his farm, Rodriguez drives past a large motor that pumps water from the river into a canal. The canal surrounds numerous large ponds, some filled with water, some temporarily empty with mud-baked bottoms. Workers can allow water to enter or exit the ponds from the canal via a series of sluice-gates. Once he releases the larvae into a pond, Rodriguez says, they grow for two months. Then, the employees empty the pond into the canal, catching the young shrimp in buckets to move them to other ponds in groups of about 300,000. After two more months, they are ready for harvest and sale. Prices vary—last year, he sold his catch for $2.60 per pound, whereas this year it was down to $1.40.

Rodriguez and other farmers sells some of their catch internationally—Ecuador is projected to export about 350,000 metric tons of shrimp this year—but there is also a robust local market. Five kilometers down the river, boats pull up to a brick landing to unload a harvest, and women separate the catch by size, and then de-vein, peel, and clean the shrimp before putting them on ice. The product is sold all over the province, ending up in ceviches and other seafood dishes.

Shrimp may be a big money-maker, but success can be fragile. Rodriguez points out a flock of white birds perched in a tree near one of his ponds. "They come when there are sick shrimp," he says. "Floaters."

When the shrimp succumb to a bout of illness, the workers add extra water to the pond to bring more oxygen in. Fortunately for the producers, there hasn't been a repeat of the white spot epidemic, which nearly torpedoed the entire industry in the 1990s while operators tried futilely to stop it. "We all followed whatever stupidity you could think of," Rodriguez says.

Eventually, the surviving shrimp built up resistance, and the industry adapted their practices to use better water filtration, fewer antibiotics, and more natural food to reduce the chances of more disease taking hold.

El Niño could be even more destructive than an epidemic. On the drive back to town, Rodriguez points out a jagged concrete wall by the roadside, all that remains of a large packing plant that was knocked down by mudslides in the 1998 storms. With mangroves still near historically low levels, the entire region is vulnerable to disaster.

One neighboring producer has replanted mangroves around his ponds to try to stem the damage and restore some of the ecosystem, but few other operators bother. "Most shrimp farmers are just about money," Rodriguez says.

In preparation for the incoming rains, he's raised up the ridges on some of his ponds, and can take his catch out by boat instead of vehicle if the roads get washed out again. At this point, however, there's little else the farmers can do if the storms arrive as strongly as predicted.

"You're rich today, but tomorrow you have nothing," he says. "You're done. Goodbye."