The Road to Pearl Lagoon

Markets, migration and municipal policies contribute to environmental problems in eastern Nicaragua

Rachael Gleason
Spring 2011

The rain stopped over Pearl Lagoon just in time for the sun to set. A break in the clouds revealed a brilliant array of blue hues. A few restless residents sat on the dock’s wooden poles and watched as dark storm clouds once against rolled over the water.

The dock is one of the main entrances to Pearl Lagoon, a remote region along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. It’s where people board crowded public boats to Bluefields and other coastal communities. And in a couple days, it’s where a fisherman hastily sells fish from his wooden dory.

Water is life for the inhabitants of Pearl Lagoon. Many spend their days and nights on the calm waters of the lagoon; they fish for lagoon fish, blue crab and shrimp using hand lines and long gillnets. Some of the region’s communities rely heavily on agriculture, but fishing is essential to nearly all Pearl Lagoon inhabitants.

That’s why community leaders, governmental officials and fishermen are concerned with an alarming new trend: It’s getting harder to catch fish. Pearl Lagoon inhabitants are yielding fewer fish despite similar or increased fishing efforts; the fish they do catch are small, they say.

“Three to four to five years ago, in this season, the rain was heavy, hard and there was lots of fishes,” says Thomas Fox, community leader of an indigenous Miskitu community of about 500 along the lagoon’s western coast called Kakabila. “Now everything has changed, everything has reduced. We don’t have sufficient fishes or shrimps to support our children.”

Natural fluctuation in fish populations and a lack of data make it hard to define the problem, says Kara Stevens, a Michigan State University doctoral student who studies the Pearl Lagoon fisheries. Stevens replicated a 1996 fish abundance study that will hopefully put a number on the perceived decline.

Pearl Lagoon inhabitants are also worried about their shrinking rainforests. The region is surrounded by a variety of natural ecosystems: rainforests, pines, mangroves, wetlands, estuaries and freshwater rivers. But new land values are changing the landscape.

The environmental changes are, to some extent, byproducts of increased road development along the coast, according to Michigan State University research. Nicaragua’s Institute for Rural Development commissioned the construction of a road to connect Pearl Lagoon and other previously remote communities to paved highways in El Rama and subsequently, the country’s capital city of Managua.

Photo: Jerry Urquhart

The 43-mile-long gravel road is unpaved and littered with potholes. But for the people of the Pearl Lagoon basin, it’s a symbol for change and accessibility. Since its completion in 2007, the road has brought new economic opportunities to communities in the basin and increased access to new technologies like electricity and telephones.

The migration of people and ideas have also made Pearl Lagoon, a fishing village of approximately 2,500 residents, a melting pot of native Central American, Spanish, Creole and Garifuna cultures.

But there are environmental costs to the newly accessible Pearl Lagoon region. The road and increased globalization have put stress on the lagoon’s marine and terrestrial resources. Consider:

• A booming timber industry in the 20th century led to exploitation of the region’s cedar and mahogany trees. Now, the road is opening the region to new fishing markets and subsequent market pressures.
• The region’s openness has paved the way for outsiders, who are unaware of social fishing norms. One group of outsiders, a mix between Spanish and native Central Americans called Mestizos, are moving into the Pearl Lagoon basin from western Nicaragua and replacing dense rainforests with livestock grazing lands called potreros.
• The municipal government tells fishermen to fish harder and lacks the ability to enforce fishing laws that protect the lagoon’s marine resources. Deforestation is also a problem, but community leaders are establishing tree nurseries to renew the resource.

Frank Lopez, a community leader in the northern village of Orinoco, has noticed a change in the community’s way of life. “How are things going to be in 10 years? I think things will be worse,” Lopez says. “Most people cannot fish. If we don’t do for them, things will be worse.”

MARKETS

On a sweltering day in July, fishermen arrived in small boats known as skiffs and wooden dories at one of the community acopios, just down the road from the main dock in Pearl Lagoon. Here, their fish were counted, weighed and stored before going to market.

“The acopios in our municipality are who buy the product from the fishermen,” says Xenia Gordon of the Pearl Lagoon Alcadia or municipal government. “They buy the product and then transfer the product to our municipality where we have a fishery enterprise and they sell the product there.”

On any given day, a young fisherman’s swordfish might end up in Bluefields, a center for commercial activity in a part of eastern Nicaragua known as Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur.

Bluefields is connected to the other side of the country by rivers and roads; the new road connects Pearl Lagoon to El Rama. Gordon has seen road development enhance the fish markets in the Pearl Lagoon basin.

Fishermen generally enter the market through the acopios, but the new road has given them access to new buyers.

Stevens recalls seeing a clear and immediate effect of the road when she was in Awas, a small settlement the road’s entrance. Stevens witnessed several fishermen waiting to hear about the whereabouts of a Spanish road buyer; if he were to come, they would go out and catch blue crab to sell to him.

“They heard that he was and everyone got in their boat and went out and set their traps,” Stevens says. “Within like hours, they had bags and bags of crab to give to this guy.”

The road buyers are particularly interested in blue crab and shrimp, Stevens says. The acopios are more likely to buy fish. But they are increasingly using the road to export their product.

The road buyers may give fisherman more options, but they make it harder to regulate the lagoon’s marine resources.

“These buyers don’t have the same kind of guidelines that other buyers have,” Stevens says. That’s especially true when it comes to the size of shrimp.

The lagoon is a nursery for white shrimps, says Xenia Gordon. That means the shrimp lay their eggs in the ocean, develop into miniature shrimp, and then return to the mouth of the lagoon, where there are abundant nutrients, to develop.

Catching smaller shrimp can interfere with the shrimp’s reproduction cycle and populations.

Markets have also impacted the Pearl Lagoon’s rainforests. More than a century ago, the region was the center of a booming timber industry, says Pedro Ordonez, a forestry expert with the Fundacion para la Autonomia y el Desarrollo de la Costa Atlantic de Nicaragua or FADCANIC.

“Nicaragua is like the middle of America. We have been a place of attraction for quite a while,” he says.

American and British companies were attracted to the region’s cedar and mahogany trees, Ordonez says.

“When people come around here and see all these timbers, it became a business,” he says. “So people started cutting the trees down to sell them to make a little money.”

According to Mark Hostetler, a Canadian researcher who has studied Pearl Lagoon development, it was an unfair economic relationship. The companies employed Pearl Lagoon inhabitants as wage-laborers and exploited their coastal resources.

Fish and agricultural markets replaced the timber industry over time. Nearly half of the region’s households surveyed by Michigan State University were engaged in farming either for local consumption or export in 2008.

The new road’s impact on agricultural markets is not clear, according to Michigan State’s research. But for many Pearl Lagoon farmers, road development has changed the way they do business.

Paved routes have eased transport to and from Pearl Lagoon and surrounding agricultural areas. For about 100 Nicaraguan Cordobas, about $5 in the United States, residents can take a 20-minute ride on a yellow school bus from Pearl Lagoon to Rocky Point.

Here, farmers like Susanna Cuthbert Gordon and her family have farmed for decades. Depending on the season, Gordon’s family plants beans, pineapples, breadfruit, corn, coconuts and other crops. Before the paved road to Rocky Point, Gordon had to worry about her crops spoiling before they reached Pearl Lagoon’s markets.

“Before this road came it was like, I used to walk three hours to get to Pearl Lagoon in deep holes. It was very hard. We used to use our horse…Now it’s much easier with the transport,” Gordon says.

The land must be cleared in order to plant crops. For many farmers, that means burning trees and other vegetation.

Kensy Sambola, a cultural anthropologist and farmer from Orinoco, tried removing trees other ways, but soon realized than she had to burn in order to plant. Sambola was motivated to start farming after speaking with local farmers about their customs and relationships with the land.

“I was most interested in having a place that you can provide fruits. I started planting all kinds of plants,” she says.

Sambola has seen fewer people working the land and more people relying on imported food and home goods. The lagoon and rainforest used to provide everything for communities, Sambola says. As a result, younger generations are missing out on having a close relationship to the lagoon and surrounding rainforests.

“It seems idyllic to be remote and cut off from everything,” Stevens says. “But I think day to day, it’s just harder for health, education, jobs and economics. It’s great for biodiversity, but [difficult] for a person who wants to improve their life.

MUNICIPAL POLICIES

The Alcadia is a two-story concrete building along the main road through Pearl Lagoon. According to locals, it’s not common for a traveling carnival to come to town, but on this particular day in July, a colorful Ferris wheel blocks the view of the municipal government building.

Here, Gordon manages the lagoon’s fisheries. Two broad national laws have afforded her that right.

Law 445 of Demarcation and Law 28 of Autonomy for Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast gives the people of the Pearl Lagoon basin the right to own their land and manage their resources. These laws allow Pearl Lagoon government officials to set municipal policies that protect the region’s fisheries and rainforests.

One of the statutes at the municipal level prevents outsiders from fishing in the lagoon, Stevens says. Another sets limits for the amount of gillnets a fisherman can use based on the size of his boat. But a lack of resources prevents the government from enforcing these rules.

Stevens recalls Gordon telling her about a group of Bluefields fishermen who were illegally fishing in the lagoon and using an incredible length of gillnets. The fisherman set up gillnets from one side of the lagoon’s mouth to the other.

“You’re blocking the gate. They catch everything. It just destroys the resource,” Stevens says. “That’s why people are so angry about the Bluefields people coming in and setting up all the nets in the bar of the lagoon.”

Gordon and other government officials went out and told them to leave. But there were times they didn’t have enough money to buy gas for the boats to go out and stop them.

The road has given Pearl Lagoon fisherman many opportunities, but more enforcement and inspection are needed to protect the resource, Gordon says

“The problem we have is, well, you need to have more inspection, more control around the size of product that’s going out,” she says.

Gordon is responsible for inspecting and certifying all trucks that leave the Pearl Lagoon area carrying fish.

It’s a difficult task to do alone, especially when the fishermen pushback, Stevens says.

Fishermen are attempting to sell smaller fish because that’s all they’re catching. In response, the government is telling fishermen to fish harder and use more gear, Stevens says.

The government has even given fishing cooperatives, groups of fishermen who pool their resources, requested gear like motors or boats. But Stevens questions whether fishing harder with more gear is the best way to manage the resource.

“If the fish are going down it’s probably not the best strategy,” she says.

MIGRATION

It’s not just laws that govern the behaviors of Pearl Lagoon fishermen. Social norms also play a role in how people use the marine resources.

“In terms of laws, and controlling people’s behaviors, what’s most powerful is the social norms that are accepted, how you’re supposed to do things,” Stevens says.

Easier access to the region has made the City of Pearl Lagoon a melting pot of cultures. But many of the fishermen entering the region are unaware of cultural fishing norms.

Norms include not throwing spoiled fish in the water, as people say it detracts fish, not fishing in the river mouth, checking gillnets often to prevent spoilage and not using gillnets in the dry season, Stevens says.

Norms also govern the size of gillnets used; communities have different social standards, Steven says.

“In Orinoco, they don’t use smaller than 4-inch gill nets. In other communities, you find people who say they shouldn’t use smaller than 4 inch but they maybe use 3 ½ inch,” she says.

These norms often protect fish populations. Outsiders who travel to the Pearl Lagoon basin to fish, which is against municipal law, aren’t always aware of these norms. Sometimes outsiders co-opt residents of Pearl to Lagoon into fishing with them; legally, it’s murky water.

People are also starting to worry about security, Stevens says.

“One woman told me that in Pearl Lagoon, she would never lock her doors. It didn’t matter. She knew everybody. There was no problem. But since the road came in she just doesn’t know who people are. There are a lot of strangers around,” she says.

If people can’t trust that other people are going to follow the rules and maintain the resource, then there’s a loss of social cohesion, she says.

Outsiders are also bringing new land values to the Pearl Lagoon basin. The changes are clear along the Wawashang River, which empties into the northern part of the lagoon.

Nicaragua’s autonomy and development foundation, FADCANIC, set up a lodge on a 2.5-square-mile natural reserve close to the river.

An elevated tower puts visitors to the Kahka Creek Natural Reserve lodge right above tree line. Looking down, the rainforest is a tangled mess of trees, bushes and vines. An occasional orange flower pokes out of the greenery.

A tall branch near the tower reveals tiny woodcutter ants carrying bite-sized pieces of leaves. Like the branch, the rainforest is alive with hundreds of species of birds, animals, reptiles and insects.

It’s an arduous uphill hike from the river to lodge. But unlike the surrounding rainforest, the trek to the lodge is relatively free of vegetation. The route is marked by reddish mud and relatively free from vegetation; Mesitzos ranchers have cleared most of the land leading to the lodge for livestock.

Mestizos are one of six principal ethnic groups that settled the Pearl Lagoon basin. Others include the Miskitu people in Kakabila, the Sumu, the Rama, the Garifuna in Orinoco and Creole, according to Michigan State University research.

All the groups depend on the lagoon’s natural resources, but they don’t use the land in the same ways. The Mestizos settled Pueblo Nuevo, a small community near the Wawashang River. They also run the Kakha Creek Natural Reserve.

Some communities about concerned about the rate of deforestation in the Pearl Lagoon basin, especially since the road is bringing in more people who want to clear the land for agriculture or grazing lands.

Chris Jordon is a Michigan State University doctoral student and wildlife ecologist researching local ecological knowledge and wildlife in the Pearl Lagoon basin. For the past two years, Jordon has traversed the region setting up camera traps to document changes in rainforest wildlife.

He’s surprised by some of the wildlife he’s captured in rainforests near Orinoco, a Garifuna community of roughly 1,000 located along the lagoon’s northern coast. Hunting and farming are common in the area, yet the photographs and videos from his cameras reveal ocelots, a type of wildcat, jaguars and a healthy deer population, Jordon says.

“It seems to me that the lower impact farming here by indigenous communities and ethnic communities is less damaging and affects the wildlife much less than the Mestizos that are coming in and making cattle ranches,” he says.

After the cycles of data collection and analysis are completed, Jordon and his Michigan State research team will be better able to understand changes in wildlife populations.

The national demarcation law was turning point for the Pearl Lagoon’s indigenous people, natural resources and wildlife. It gave groups the right to own their land and subsequently, the right to protect it from outsiders.

But the process of actually surveying and titling the land is a long and costly process, says Frank Lopez, president of the territorial municipality who lives in Orinoco, located along the lagoon’s northern edge.

“You just don’t start demarcating, It’s very expensive,” Lopez says. “You have to make a socioeconomic research, diagnostic of all the communities. Then you have to make one of all the Mestizo’s land. It has a lot of process. Its not just, you go and title the land.”

The law hasn’t stopped outsiders from attempting to clear land in some indigenous communities. Thomas Fox, Kakabila’s community leader, is particularly worried about Mestizos invading the western edge of his village’s rainforest.

“They are destroying the forest more than anymore,” Fox says.

Fox isn’t the only one worried about the Mestizos clearing land; his sentiments are mirrored in other coastal communities.

“In the rainforest, we have big trees. Mahagony, cedar. They don’t care. They cut down a thousand… It’s a very big difference after the Mestizos. They cut down the forest,” Lopez says.

Not all rainforests in the Pearl Lagoon basin are lost to agricultural expansion. Inhabitants are quick to point out that hurricanes also damage forest cover.

But the double impact of human development and natural disasters has taken a toll on the region’s rainforests. Some have started tree nurseries in an effort to renew the resource.

“If you were to go to rivers…you will see how all of the land, forest changed into pasture land. Some of the best land we have here has changed into patreros,” Ordonez says. “That’s why we are trying to get people conscious about plating a few trees. We know this is the only way to save this land, because it is washing away.”

One of the farmers in Rocky Point manages a small nursery on her family’s land with seeds from Ordonez.

Fox also manages a nursery in Kakabila. He receives cedar and mahogany tree seeds from URRACAN, a university system of the autonomous regions of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, and plants them near the back of the community.

The seeds sprout in about 15 days; trees will be full-grown in 20 to 30 years, Fox says.

“The tree is something to benefit to everyone,” he says. “It gives you good oxygen, keeps out contamination. We need to protect our forest…In the future the children will have the opportunity to make something of these forests…”