Aquaculture

I came across a report on Channel 4 News about a plan to open a lobster farm in the TCI. The report indicates that the top person at the DECR (Department of Environment and Coastal Resources) is in support of the idea and enthusiastic that the research is being fully funded by Darden Restaurants (which includes Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and others).


Watch the video here:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i6iAkaY02A)
The Director is quoted as saying:

The DECR only has one scientific officer responsible for fisheries, so collaborating with Darden saves us money and time and provides us with expertise. I cannot over emphasize the benefits of research. We can ask the scientists to collect information on additional parameters and use the data for modeling the TCI Fishery.

I'm stunned. Did this guy ever question this corporation's motives? The Darden Group has a direct interest in seeing that aquaculture is implemented, so I'm sure we can count on their "scientists" to find that it will have no detrimental impacts on the environment.

Fish farms are notorious for being environmentally disruptive. It's logical to assume that raising captive animals for consumption would be better than catching them in the wild - you are in a sense protecting the "natural" ecosystems by only consuming the captive animals. But these farms have all sorts of problems, such as breeding disease that can affect wild populations, polluting surrounding waters and destroying habitat, and reducing available prey in the wild. This is the case for farmed Salmon and I assume much of it would apply to lobster too.

I won't take the position that lobster farms should not be opened here though. Not without first seeing a study (an honest study) that says it shouldn't be. The current industry is struggling and something needs to be done. There are serious concerns (both social and ecological) for the way things are being done now. The amount of the catch and the size of the lobsters is lower every year, and the South Caicos community is entirely dependent on the fishing industry. If farming could be done with minimal environmental impact and deliver real social benefits to the community, I would be in support of it. But just I don't trust somebody like the Darden Group, which is so blatantly interested in one outcome, to conduct an honest study.

Empty Handed

This afternoon a few of us decided to make a trip up to Coast Guard in search of dinner. Our main goal was to catch some lobster, but we planned to get a few conch and possibly a fish if we had time. It was a fruitless effort. And it gave us some insight into how depleted the fisheries (at least very local fisheries) are. We couldn't even find a lobster big enough to legally take, let alone catch one. We didn't find a single conch, and so we had no bait to catch a fish. We had pasta instead. If we were cavemen, we'd be hungry.

Wild donkeys that roam up near Coast Guard.

If we swam out farther towards the breakers, I'm sure we would have had more luck, but it's quite a long ways out and better accessed by boat. We found six small lobsters, which would have been tasty, but left them to grow. Overfishing of those small ones is a major reason nobody can catch larger ones anymore. Even though we came back empty handed, it was entertainment for the evening.

Night Snorkel

With Jessee out of town, I'm holding down the fort as the only American at the Center (and possibly on the whole island). Last night I went out on a night snorkel with two French Canadians, one Englishman, three Italians, and a French woman. This after a long day in the water with three other Britons.

The night snorkel was the most eventful. Such different things come out at night. As when night diving, we used high-powered underwater flashlights to see and left a strobe on the boat to find our way back. A brief list of the marine life I saw includes: a sleeping Hawksbill Turtle, a small Green Turtle (which had previously been tagged and which we caught to ID), a couple Beaded Sea Cucumbers (a nocturnal species of Cucumber), a spikey egg-shaped snail-type-thing called a Cowrie, something called blood worms that were attracted to my light and swarmed around me (yuck!), a large shrimp (possibly a Red Night Shrimp), a few crabs (Channel Crab, Hairy Clinging Crab?, Blue Crab), a Queen Parrotfish sleeping in its protective saliva cocoon, a couple Giant Basket Stars, a Feather Duster Worm, and a Spotted Moray Eel. Add five Sting Rays, two Eagle Rays, and two more Hawksbill Turtles to the list if you include what I saw during the day.

Parrotfish Sleeping in Saliva Cocoon

I got to hold and release the Green Turtle. It was impressively strong once it got its fins back in the water and impressively agile as it swam quickly through the crowd of snorkelers that had gathered to see it. Green Turtles are less common here while Hawksbills seem to be especially abundant, even though they are one of the most endangered worldwide.

I didn't know what a Cowrie was, but when I spotted one, somebody explained it to me. They are similar to the "Flamingo Tongue," I described in an earlier post. They're a mollusk that has a hard shell and fleshy mantle that it can extend over it. The picture below shows the mantle partially extended. The one I saw had it fully extended. The second picture shows a Cowrie shell, which might look familiar. Cowrie shells are apparently often used in beach jewelry. The one I saw, however, was about 5 inches across.

Cowrie with mantle partially extended.

Cowrie Shells

We also saw 3 or 4 small Spiny Lobsters. They are nocternal so we expected to see some, but Marta (who has been here for more than 4 years) said it was quite unusual to see so few. This echoes with what the fisherman have been saying, that this year's catch has been unusually low. Perhaps it's a normal fluctuation, but more likely, they have been overfished in recent years.

Giant Basket Star

One of the large crabs we saw had a flap extended on its underside with, what looked like, gills exposed. It seemed to be filtering water through. Maybe it was feeding. I'm not sure. The Beaded Sea Cucumber was the first of its kind that I've seen. My ID book says that they hide under coral slabs and rubble during the day, but often come out in the open at night. The Giant Basket Star was another interesting find. They too hide during the day, "coil[ing] into a tight ball ... and hid[ing] in dark recesses." They open up at night forming a large "fan-shaped plankton net." I might have mistaken it for a Gorgonian (a type of soft coral), if I hadn't gone down to take a close look. I had a close run-in with (what I think was) the Red Night Shrimp. It was attracted to, then confused, by my light. It nearly colided with my head at one point. The parrotfish had built what one of the others called a "saliva cocoon," which supposedly protects it from something while it sleeps. I didn't know they did this, but I had seen remnants of the gooey mass they create during and not known exactly what it came from.

Open Season

Today was opening day of lobster season. This is pretty big deal here on South Caicos, as the economy is almost entirely based on the fisheries. Coincidentally, today I saw my first two lobsters while snorkeling. They were inside of one of the Marine Protected Areas at the south end of Long Cay so they were (at least theoretically) safe from all the fishermen. Down here we have Spiny Lobster, which are quite different from the ones in New England that most Americans are familiar with. Spiny Lobster don't have claws.

Caribbean Spiny Lobster

The lobsters are caught using a method called gigging. A metal hook is fastened to the end of a stick and is used to pull the lobsters out of their holes. The natural reaction of a lobster is to move backwards quickly to get away when scared or threatened. So the fishermen put the hook underneath the lobster and pull forward. When the lobster attempts to retreat they only become more strongly hooked. I'm not entirely clear on how the process works as I've only ever had it described to me. But I do plan on getting a fishing license and trying my hand at it.

A boat returned to the dock with it's catch.

Several of us went down to the public dock this afternoon to see all the lobstermen come in with the catches. They all use really small motor boats (probably not much bigger than 12 or 15 feet), and they just toss the lobsters in hull. Some had caught a few fish, and one person had caught a few Spanish Lobsters for his own consumption (which, he said, were the best tasting of all lobster species), but by far they were after the Spiny Lobster.

Shoveling Lobster

All the boats lined up at the dock where they waited for their turn to have their lobsters weighed. When they got to the front of the line they shoveled (literally shoveled) their lobsters into baskets and handed them up to the inspectors. One man dumped the baskets into a large hanging scale, and another sorted through them. The ones that were obviously under the allowable size he tossed aside into a pile on the floor. The ones that were close to the allowable size he would measure using a plastic gauge. This part upset some of the SFS staff because all the fishermen had quite a few that were obviously under size. They were all already dead, so they couldn't be returned to the water, but there didn't seem to be any penalty for having taken an under size lobster. They just didn't get weighed with the fisherman's haul, and so he wasn't paid for having caught it. I suppose they could have mistakenly caught a few small lobsters because they were hiding too far under a rock or if they were close to the limit, but there we so many that it appeared to be deliberate. I can only guess that some people take small lobsters and hope a few get through the screening undetected. The small ones that get thrown aside don't go to waste because we watched them get de-shelled and put in cooler, but it's not clear where they go. My suspicion is that they'll make their way into the black market.

Inspection

Inspector measuring a lobster.

Discarded under-size lobsters.

Once the fisherman has emptied his boat (yes, his boat - women aren't involved in catching them), and the inspector has pulled out the small lobsters, he calls out the total weight, which is recorded by another inspector. It appeared that the fisherman was then given a receipt, and (I'm not certain but) it looked like he went inside the building for payment - I saw a man walking out with a handful of cash.

Lobster Heads

The scale is then dumped into a wheelbarrow, and the lobsters are taken inside to be processed. This is where the women are involved. In fact, every person inside was female. The first thing they do is grab the head and tail of the lobster and twist. It separates quite easily. The meat-filled tail goes down the line and the head is discarded. I couldn't see much beyond this because it didn't appear the onlookers were allowed further inside, but I think the meat was then cut from the tail and, I assume, frozen. The heads were thrown back into a wheelbarrow and taken back to the dock where they were loaded into another boat to be taken to the bay and dumped (I'm sure there's a frenzy of fish and probably sharks around where they dump them).

A wheelbarrow full of lobster.

Women working in processing plant.

Lobster heads on the way to be dumped.

It appeared that the fishermen are basically contractors working for an owner of the processing plant. But I suppose the plant could also be a cooperative owned by the fishermen. I will try to find out. Now Jessee and I are off to a place called Darryl's to get some fresh lobster to eat!