Wednesday, 7 July 2010

Mark Schrope and I met up at 8AM at the Casa del Balam and headed for CINVESTAV to pick up our interpreter Sara Morales. Sara is a former MS student of Jorge Herrera at CINVESTAV, and she currently works for him on several of his long term coastal ecology projects in the northern Yucatan.

Sara and Jorge had made arrangements for us with Victor Manuel Canul of the Ducks Unlimited field station in Celestun to speak with some local fishermen. Celestun is a small, but growing, fishing village due west of Merida on the coast. It has a beautiful mangrove lined lagoon to the east and nice shelly, sandy beaches to the west on the Gulf of Mexico. It is famous for large populations of ducks in the fall and winter and numerous flamingos in the summer.

Jose Chay, 74, had vivid memories of the spill, noting that it permanently killed all of the oysters and clams, the same thing we heard in Isla Arenas yesterday. He said that the local fishermen switched jobs to other things, like salt mining, crabbing in the lagoon, or making charcoal from wood. They did these things for varying periods of time, noting that some started back fishing in about two years, but with poor results. Others got back to fishing in 4-5 years when things seemed to be back to usual for the fin fish but not shellfish. He noted that there was some tar about 20-25 feet offshore, but he was not specific about exactly where it was.

Our second interview was with Eliodoro Carmel Couoh, who now works for CONANP, the national commission for protected areas in Mexico. He was a fisherman at the time of Ixtoc, but he said all fishing stopped because there were no fish. He moved to other ports where he could find fishing work, like Sisal and Chicxulub. He moved back in 5 or 6 years and started fishing again. He thinks that the protected area is now very good for Celestun, since it adds different kinds of activities and jobs, and it attracts more people.

We did not search for any old Ixtoc tar at Celestun, but we did find out that the fishermen were impacted by the spill.