WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • SEPTEMBER 2017 39 Surveying Shrimp Producers Most of this has been common knowledge in Ecuador but there has been little bibliography or published research. In 2007, the aquaculture engineering program at ESPOL conducted extensive mapping of aquaculture development in Ecuador. More than 150 researchers visited, surveyed and interviewed producers all around Ecuador’s coastline and reviewed the available publications. This told the story of how production techniques evolved in different parts of Ecuador, the state of aquaculture in that zone at the moment, and the environmental and socioeconomic impacts it had in that zone. This article is based partly on those nearly 40 publications. A search in www.dspace.espol.edu.ec or a Google search for “caracterización y propuesta técnica de la acuicultura” will provide links to pdfs of most of those publications. In the past ten years, there have been significant changes in the Ecuadorian shrimp industry: production and prices have increased, the industry is more regulated and ordered, there is a better appreciation for the environment, and many actions were taken to address sustainability. To assess those changes, a survey was taken in October 2016 of 126 shrimp farmers operating along the Ecuadorian coastline. Shrimp Farming and Land Use It is generally accepted that one of the impacts from shrimp farming of greatest concern is the destruction of mangroves for pond construction (Páez-Osuna 2001). Remote sensing image data (Fig. 1) sheds some light in this case. According to the Ecuadorian Undersecretary for Aquaculture, there were 213,032 ha of shrimp ponds in 2014, 70 percent of which were located on privately owned high ground above the high tide. Only 30 percent (64,074 ha) were located in what is called the “bay and beach zone,” state-owned leased land, consisting originally of mainly mangroves and salt flats. From 1969 to 2006, there was a reduction of nearly 47,000 ha of salt flats. It is well known to camaroneros that it is less costly and easier to build a farm in salt flats than in mangrove forests. Also, mangrove soil is acidic and high in organic matter, which is not good for aquaculture. For these reasons, most shrimp farms on low lands (44,000 ha) were built in salt flats and only the remaining 20,000 ha in mangrove forest (Spurrier 2012). Of the nearly 55,000 ha of mangrove area lost A Brief History In Ecuador, large-scale commercial shrimp culture began almost 50 years ago by mere serendipity. A road was being built in the southern province of El Oro near Peru and during high tide water entered and formed shallow pools in the excavated areas beside the road embankments. After some time, birds were seen feeding from these small ponds and people started catching shrimp from them with cast nets. Two local entrepreneurs decided to replicate these flooded ponds on a larger scale and built the first commercial shrimp farm in 1969, which continues to operate to this day. In the following years, many other businessmen with no formal expertise in shrimp farming copied the idea, starting the shrimp boom in Ecuador. Little was known at the time about raising shrimp, but through sheer will and by trial and error, the operational and business constraints of shrimp farming were overcome, although not always in the best long-term way. A lack of scientific knowledge and production methodologies did not stop Ecuadorian camaroneros (shrimp entrepreneurs) from becoming one of the world’s main suppliers of high quality farmraised shrimp. In fifteen years, almost 90,000 ha of shrimp farms were built, and by 1995 nearly 180,000 ha were in operation (Fig. 1). In the 1980s, large shrimp operations that could afford it began bringing emerging shrimp aquaculture technology from abroad. Ecuadorian universities also started to do research and produce trained aquaculturists. During these years, with the help of Ecuadorian scientists and technicians, foreign techniques – mainly American, French and Japanese – were combined and adapted to the country’s particularities and gave birth to the “Ecuadorian Shrimp Culture Technique.” This was not a fixed technique and as time went by and new problems arose, culture techniques had to evolve. Because of the disorganized way the industry evolved, it is not surprising that many conflicts developed with the environment that affected sustainability of the activity. We have to keep perspective here. Sustainability, environmental friendliness and good management practices are rather new terms. It is not a matter of evil people intentionally destroying the environment for profit. It is more a story of people doing things that looked reasonable at the time and then later gradually learning and adopting better practices. Shrimp Farming and the Environment in Ecuador: Past and Present Fabrizio Marcillo FIGURE 1. Evolution of mangrove, salt flats and shrimp areas from 1969 to 2006 (Clirsen 2007). (CONTINUED ON PAGE 40) FIGURE 2. Weight and value of shrimp exports from Ecuador (Cámara Naciconal de Acuicultura 2016).
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