'Sea Shepherds' to Cultivate Pearls

Pearl production could benefit 30,000 residents of La Guajira, including the Wayúu Indians, who see the ocean as an extensive pastureland.

RIOHACHA, Colombia - From oysters in sacks hung underwater, pearls, mother-of-pearl for adornments and the highly nutritional oyster meat are harvested by fisherfolk in La Guajira Peninsula, which in the times when pirates sailed the Caribbean, was a world pearl emporium.

The fame of La Guajira pearls dates to 1499, when captain Alonso de Ojeda and geographers Juan de la Cosa and Américo Vespucio explored the Caribbean coasts, reaching Cape Vela, the first continental Spanish settlement, which in 1501 became the Coquibacoa government seat.

Tales of the native Wayúu peoples who wore strings of pearls awakened the greed of the Conquistadors, and along with the trade of these "sea stones" began the trafficking of Indians to the Antilles, and the slave trade of Africans brought to mine gypsum and salt.

The Indians traded pearls for firearms, dealing with English, French and Dutch privateers and pirates, who battled with the Spaniards for control over the region's natural wealth.

Thus originated the multi-ethnic population that inhabits the peninsula, located on the northern coast of South America, covering 21,000 square km, shared by Colombia and Venezuela.

During the hot afternoons in Riohacha, a Colombian city on the peninsula, the elderly sit in rocking chairs in the doorways to their homes, and some remember the "last pearl bonanza, sometime around 1920, when the town of Carrizal still conducted big trade."

There is also talk of pearls at the beach, where fisherfolk gather, though not with nostalgia for the past, but rather as a viable project, based on studies conducted in Cape Vela by the Environment Ministry's Institute for Marine and Fishing Research (INVEMAR).

In 1990, experiments were begun for cultivating Pinctada imbricata oysters in sacks hung beneath the water and in boxes set in the seabed.

This mother-of-pearl species "has great potential" due to its rapid growth and high production of soft tissue, INVEMAR biologist Federico Newmark told Tierramérica.

The high demand for pearls is taking its toll on natural oyster colonies, whose natural cycle of reproduction can be more than a century.

The benefit of the INVEMAR project is that the oyster-raising system protects the colonies and significantly reduces the reproduction cycle.

The project would have triple the production for some 6,000 small fisherfolk and approximately 30,000 residents of the Guajira coast, anthropologist Wilder Guerra told Tierramérica.

The formation of pearls is contingent on other factors, but the inside of the shell -- the mother-of-pearl -- is used for inlays in decorations and jewelry, and the oyster flesh is nutritious, he said.

This has been proven by the project that has already been launched by INVEMAR and the Fisherfolk Association of Playa del Muerto (ASOPLAM), in the Tayrona national nature park, along the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, an ecosystem that influences the La Guajira Peninsula.

Since 1994, a group of families that subsisted on fishing and tourism began to raise the bivalve mollusks using simple techniques, learned from INVEMAR biologists.

The process takes one year. From the "planting" of the tiny larvae in sacks suspended in water, until the larvae attach to the sackcloth and reach 1.5 to 2.0 cm long takes two months.

In another two months, they are selected according to species -- Pinctada imbricata, Agropecten nucleus, Nudipecten nodosus -- and transferred to tubular and compartmentalized pearl nets, where they grow to three or four cm in length.

"The time of joy" comes when the result of the collective effort is harvested, fisherman Bienvenido Pinto, one of 70 people involved in the project, told Tierramérica.

According to biologist Guerra, if La Guajira can replicate what the fisherfolk of ASOPLAM have done, "it would generate important income for the Wayúu." But changes must be made to legislation so that it covers "communal territory rights over the sea," he said.

The indigenous peoples of the peninsula consider the sea a big pasture, in which fish are the livestock. Many found it incomprehensible last month when a Korean fishing vessel was found to be catching sharks, cutting off their valuable fins and throwing their bloodied bodies back into the sea.

For the Wayúu, the possibility that the Playa del Muerto project could be expanded to their region brings with it the hope of improving their marginalized status in the local economy.

Colombia has coastline on the Caribbean and the Pacific, but of the 90,000 direct and indirect jobs generated by small fishing operations, 62,000 are in continental freshwater. Of the 379 motorized fishing vessels that make up the industrial fishing flotilla, just 56 percent fly the Colombian flag.

The more romantic among the locals hope the song "El medallón", by Rafael Escalona, will take on new meaning: "From La Guajira I will bring/ the most beautiful necklace of pearls/ so that the stars are envious/ at night when you wear it."

* María Isabel García is a Tierramérica contributor.