Delfina Mendoza cherishes the memory of accompanying her parents to the Laguna-Estero de La Cruz to collect her family's livelihood: the rice clam. La Laguna is the largest wetland in Bahía de Kino, Sonora, in northwestern Mexico, a body of water of more than 30 square kilometers, which she remembers filled with clams four decades ago.
However, due to the overexploitation of clams and the deterioration of the lagoon due to the contamination of solid waste and wastewater from shrimp farms, these memories are far from the current situation.
For this reason, for 10 years, together with nine other women, she has been dedicated to regenerating rice clams and improving the quality of the lagoon through the Women of the Sea of Cortés Fishing Cooperative. In doing so, they have faced challenges such as machismo and the financial sustainability of their project.
History of overexploitation
“My mother was a clam farmer along with my father in this estuary and every day they put out 60 kilos. Everything was full of clams, we didn't need to go any further to look for it. I have very beautiful memories because they brought me to help remove clams, to cook them and to discard them right here. But besides, we had fun watching the little birds and the crabs, and we admired the landscape,” Mendoza said.
The abundance she had to see has gradually come to an end because more and more people were catching clams, some without permission and without respecting the minimum catch size established by the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Commission (Conapesca).
Although the species reproduces naturally, extraction is faster than its reproduction cycle, which has caused the clam population to become unbalanced.
“The one who comes to harvest clams takes all sizes, takes the reproducers and those that are growing. He doesn't respect and everything ends,” Mendoza said.
In Mexico, rice clams are caught in Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora and Sinaloa. According to the National Fishing Charter, the status of this species is “used to the maximum sustainable” in San Felipe, Baja California; in Magdalena Bay, Baja California Sur, and in Sinaloa. This means that current extraction is at the limit of not jeopardizing the recovery of the species in the long term.
While in the rest of the first two entities mentioned and in Sonora, their status is undetermined because the level of exploitation allowed or the current state of the resource is not precisely known.
The overexploitation of clams made his parents seek sustenance in other activities other than fishing, such as the father of Felix Guadalupe Campos, one of the members of the cooperative, who went from being a clam farmer to selling hot dogs.
The estuary has also been shrinking and fish such as curvina, lisa and snapper have disappeared due to pollution.
With the objective of bringing life back to the estuary to inherit a source of work, food and a healthy ecosystem to their children and grandchildren, in 2015 several women from Bahía de Kino came together to found the Women's Cooperative of the Sea of Cortés with the support of Community and Biodiversity (Cobi), a civil organization dedicated to marine conservation and the sustainable management of fishing resources.
“I am in the cooperative and in other groups because I want my children, grandchildren and future generations to know the estuary and what is in it. I don't want them to know him in photos, but to come and explore him,” Campos said.
Sow for the present and the future
Members of the Cooperativa Mujeres del Mar de Cortés monitoring the La Cruz lagoon. Source: Daniela Reyes.
In addition to their formal jobs and domestic and care work, the women of the cooperative take care of the estuary by repopulating rice clams, monitoring and watching.
“We saw that the clam was extinct and we thought it was a good opportunity to give back to the estuary how much it has given us because most of us got ahead with this species. Right now, the goal is to repopulation so that it reaches a healthy state,” Méndez said.
They began with the purchase of axe callus seed from the Sonora State Marine Species Reproductive Center (CREMES) operated by the Aquaculture Institute of the State of Sonora (IAES).
They prefatted the seeds and then sowed them, but with this method the seeds became stressed and had a very high mortality. It took them several years and tests to arrive at the most successful technique.
Currently, they spread the seed directly to the ground without pre-fattening them, leaving it for seven months and harvesting it from October to December, when it reaches its size.
“We see that this has worked because here on the shore, where there were none before, there are already many sizes because it is reproducing a lot,” said Laura Acuña, president of the cooperative.
They are able to verify this through their monitoring. During the months of November to December, they select the quadrant they are going to monitor, wear their water shoes and equipment and walk through the muddy estuary when the tide is low.
They rake the ground, remove all the clams they find in that square meter and take them to the shore where they take the weight, the size and write it down in a log.
“We mark each quadrant with the GPS, with these rakes we scratch the ground and it's easier to remove the clams. We use the vernier to remove the size and here we weigh them,” Acuña said.
They do this in the seven hectares of the lagoon-estuary covered by their development fishing permit, an authorization granted by Conapesca for the purpose of research, study and conservation of resources.
Tools for developing monitoring and surveillance logs. Source: Daniela Reyes.
Once a fortnight, they come to the area to do surveillance to discourage illegal fishing, they check for garbage and do cleaning, since they have no support from authorities such as Conapesca to support them in inspection and surveillance tasks.
“They don't respect and it's very difficult for us to be watching here every day. There have been reports of other species and other fishermen stealing their fishing gear and the authorities do nothing. Then you say, for what?” , Méndez said.
From the purchase of the seed, the transfer to the estuary and the equipment to do the monitoring generate expenses for them. Since 2022, the cooperative has received funding through the “Blue Innovation” project, promoted by the French Development Agency in collaboration with Cobi, whose objective is to maintain the resilience of marine ecosystems and increase the adaptive capacity of coastal communities by promoting conservation and sustainability solutions.
However, the cooperative is seeking to be sustainable through new forms of self-financing such as the sale of clams packed or in plates, with the objective of dedicating itself 100% to the cooperative. They are even planning to start harvesting oysters, which can yield greater profits than clams.
“We already have clams and now we want to give them added value, because if you sell them in shell you have to deliver more volume and at a lower cost. But if you give it added value, you sell less and pay more. We want to start to benefit from our work, from the effort during all this time. From now on, we think that everything will change for the better,” Campos said.
Since they began with the repopulation, now more people are seen on the site with their buckets full of clams and they have seen how the condition of the estuary has improved. The results they have obtained so far have been the driving force for continuing with this project despite all the obstacles they have faced.
“It motivates us to see that we are bringing life back to the estuary, a place so important for the inhabitants of Kino Bay that it must be taken care of, that we must not let it die,” Mendoza said.
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