44 JUNE 2019 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG Guadalquivir River in the province of Seville. That, according to those responsible for breeding crayfish of the species Procambarus clarkii, was an ideal location for an introduction and a center of crayfish culture. The place of introduction chosen for the first trial was a separate isolated field. It was near a pump station with an irrigation supply channel and a drainage channel. There were two access roads with no trespassing rights as the lanes ended at the embankment that forms the river bank with its “salt plug” depending on the tides of the Atlantic Ocean. All responsible precautions had been taken to avoid the spread of Myxomatosis in rabbits from the 3.3 cultivated hectares of the estate of French doctor Paul Felix ArmandDelille in 1952. As Spain is a great wine producer, the arrival of Phylloxera was ominous. I thought it was a good start to talk about invasive species. The disease comes from America but also the cure comes from America. There were already the major premises for “water-flooded agriculture” or use of land in polyculture: rice, water, paddies, men with the desire to undertake. I found them all in Mr. Rafael Grau of the Casa Alta farm, Isla Mayor. Once these necessary elements were found, the expert from Louisiana State University spoke about crayfish — not tilapia or catfish. Their criteria were a secluded site, surrounded by waters that increase in salinity. That the annual sheet of fresh water is elementary to a paddy, so that salinity does not rise through the capillary system of the soil. That all the facilities such as the leveling of the land, with a channel of water inlet higher than the drain, the levees and the floodgates of the changeable water level, like in a pond, already existed. Everything necessary with reference to the terrain, climate and availability of a water cycle managed by man was in existence. What was missing was the law to use the intentionally and seasonally flooded agricultural land for aquaculture or astaciculture as well as the movement of the species from one continent to another. The very good, 109-year old water law in Spain was outdated With the collapse of all European populations of crayfish, starting with the 1860 introduction into Italy of Orconectes crayfish, historical supplies of this traditional Spanish food item became increasingly difficult to obtain from habitats within Spain. Some imported live supplies of non-native crayfishes began to find their way into Spanish cuisine, primarily from populations of Astacus leptodactylus from Turkey. Eventually that Turkish source also failed due to their susceptibility to waterborne infections. By 1958, these infections were first documented in Spain. By the 1970s, the availability of any crayfish to Spanish consumers was severely restricted. What little was available primarily came in through French imports, creating a negative trade deficit and funneling Spanish money into France. This was the situation 44 years ago, when I was in the capital of Seville and gave a lecture as the person responsible for freshwater aquaculture in the government. The guests at the conference were divided in the room. In the first rows next to the platform were the owners of the rice fields, behind them were some rice farmers who worked the land and, in the back corner of the room, the fishermen. I was among other directors on the stage from the governmental entity responsible for inland fisheries called Instituto Nacional para la Conversación de la Naturaleza ICONA (Institute for the Conservation of Nature). I begged fishermen to leave the seats at the back of the room and occupy the nearby rows of lecturers. They got up en bloc and approached the stage between the wooden seats with a certain rumble. Once silence returned, I began to present an idea that had already been exposed to the authorities in Madrid on many occasions: it is a work that we have to achieve together — fishermen, rice farmers, landowners, scientists and even politicians. That a new species of crustaceans will be imported into Europe, then called “crayfish from the marshy areas” to the right bank of the River Crayfish in Spain Andrés Salvador Habsburgo-Lorena By 1982, due in large part to the introduction of Procambarus clarkii to Spain in 1974, the country became a net exporter of crayfish to France. In 2019, Don Andrés Habsburgo (center) met with grandsons of Procambarus pioneer Rafael Grau Viel. Since the initial introduction, the Grau family have now been processing Spanish Procambarus for three generations.
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