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At low tide, Johana Carolina Cruz Potes steps into the mudflats around Isla Costa Rica, in Ecuador’s Jambelí Archipelago. Holding a bucket and a short metal hook, she probes the tangled roots of a mangrove patch, searching for concha negra, black-shelled cockles, buried beneath the sludge.

Cruz Potes has done this work since she was nine, when she first followed her father into the mud. But earning a living from shellfish gathering – often the only income for families here – has become harder as grounds shrink and catches decline.

For Cruz Potes, now 32, there is little doubt where the blame lies. Pointing towards a large tank, she says: “When the shrimp farms arrived, they cleared all the trees to build those ponds. But the conchas live in the roots. When the trees go, they go too.”

Over the past decade, Ecuador’s shrimp production has nearly quadrupled, overtaking oil as the country’s top export. Nearly all goes to China, the US and Europe, with exports increasing fivefold after tariffs were eliminated.

Production has pushed farms deeper into landscapes already scarred by deforestation. Between 1969 and 1999, Ecuador lost up to 43% of its mangroves, and shrimp farms now cover about 1.5 times the area of the remaining mangroves.

Mangrove clearing is now prohibited, and the industry claims conversion has fallen to near zero even as production has grown dramatically. But residents and scientists say the obliteration of mangrove ecosystems has not ended.

“People think mangrove destruction is something that happened in the past,” says Eduardo Rebolledo Monsalve, a researcher at the Catholic University in Esmeraldas. “That’s not true.”

Data from Trase, a supply-chain transparency initiative, shows 427 hectares of mangrove were converted into shrimp ponds between 2014 and 2018, mostly in Guayas province, the country’s main shrimp-farming hub. Another study based on remotely sensed images found 2,900 hectares disappeared in the following four years, nearly half within protected areas.

In January 2024, a navy operation reportedly detected a 10-hectare clearing inside Manglares Don Goyo, in the inner Gulf of Guayaquil – designated a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention.

Luis Ángel Flores Ramírez, a crab harvester in the southern province of El Oro, where shrimp farming first took root, says shrimp farmers now clear smaller patches “under the pretext that they are only pruning them, or that they need to dig a canal or build dykes.”

Further up the coast, Pablo Roberto Demera, leader of Asopesanjocha, an artisanal fishers’ association, describes a similar pattern.

“Every time they repair a pond wall, they clear two more metres, then two more metres,” he says, adding that residents often discover the damage only after patrols find widened walls or fresh loss.

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The damage extends beyond clearing. Shrimp farms can interrupt tidal flows that keep mangrove soils wet and oxygenated. “When walls, canals and pond embankments cut off that exchange, the mud can dry and harden, salinity can shift and trees that are still standing may slowly die,” says Rebolledo Monsalve.

Shrimp farms also discharge water back into estuaries. Ecuadorian law prohibits releasing untreated waste, which can contain organic matter and nutrients from feed, faeces and fertilisers. However, a 2023 study found mangrove systems around shrimp farms in Esmeraldas had about two and a half times as much ammonium and phosphorus as ordinary mangrove water. A Seafood Watch assessment estimated that more than half of farm waste is released into the environment.

A former shrimp worker from La Libertad recalls being told to release pond water directly into the estuary. He says: “Everything goes straight into the estuary. It all turns white with foam.”

One commonly used substance is sodium metabisulfite, added to harvested shrimp to prevent spoilage. For Mauricio Cruz, a crabber in Huaquillas, such chemicals add to pollution concerns, especially during water exchanges; seeing dead fish is not uncommon.

Máximo Jordán, president of an association of artisanal crabbers and fishers in Puerto Roma, a village surrounded by more than 150 shrimp ponds in the Gulf of Guayaquil, says crabbers spotted pipes they believe carry dredged sediment to the mangroves. “Why don’t they throw it into their own canals?” he asks. “They throw it 300 metres into the forest. It contaminates the trees and kills the crabs.”

Wendy Chávez-Páez, an environmental researcher with the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, says pollution is poorly addressed. She adds: “There is very little funding to investigate these impacts properly. And there’s not much political appetite either, because shrimp is economically important.”

Despite complaints from local communities and campaigners, the president of Ecuador’s National Chamber of Aquaculture, José Antonio Camposano, denies that the shrimp farms affiliated with the association are polluting water. “If I have poor water quality, low oxygen levels, or substances that shouldn’t be there, the shrimp will become stressed, get sick, stop growing, stop eating, and so on,” he says. “In other words, it doesn’t make sense to raise an animal under unfavourable conditions, because that only encourages the spread of disease.”

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Making matters worse is a regulatory system that is too weak to detect the damage. In Esmeraldas, with more than 200 shrimp farms, there is one aquaculture inspector, who lacks transport.

Communities can report damage under mangrove custody agreements, in place since 2000. Yet complaints rarely lead to sanctions. The 15 de Enero association, overseeing 3,330 hectares in El Oro, has filed 17 complaints since 2019.

“Unfortunately, we know that they reach the ministry’s legal department, and that’s where it all ends,” says former president Flores Ramírez. “There’s no accountability.”

In one case, a fine was imposed after a complaint about an illegal pond. But he says: “They never removed the pond, nor was the mangrove restored.”

The ministry of the environment has addressed 44 complaints in El Oro since 2019, but did not respond when asked about penalties.

Jordán says his association filed a complaint about sediment dumping in Guayas; authorities inspected the site, but no formal answer has followed.

Flores Ramírez says complainants even risk retaliation. He explains: “When you file a complaint, they see your face. You can put your life at risk.”

One crabber in El Oro echoes his concern, saying: “They’ll come to your house to threaten you. But if we don’t speak out, we also risk having the ministry take away the fishing area we’re allowed to work in.”

For Chávez-Páez, this exposes the limits of custody agreements. She says: “They are a powerful tool, but they shift the burden of protecting mangroves on to poor communities, instead of the state agencies and companies with the resources to do so.”

Last year, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the French food company Labeyrie Fine Foods, and the Ecuadorian producer Omarsa announced a project to restore 10 hectares in Cerrito de los Morreños, with trees sourced from a nursery that Omarsa says it helped the community develop.

However, industry-backed restoration projects are not new, and a 2011 report by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation found a project at an Omarsa farm restored only a small fraction of what was expected.

Nadia Romero Salgado, a researcher who studies the social and ecological conflicts caused by Ecuador’s shrimp industry, says such schemes can be positive, but risk burnishing the image of a sector that has not fully addressed past damage.

On Isla Costa Rica, restoration seems more like a form of resistance. Alexander Alvarado Reyes, 36, president of the local mangrove association, says residents have been planting mangroves in an area once used for shellfish.

Some seedlings have taken root; others have been washed away by the current or eaten by snails. But where the trees have survived, says Alvarado Reyes, the mud has started to soften again. With luck, the conchas will return one day.

This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe