How the world’s voracious appetite for shrimp is destroying Ecuador’s mangroves

As demand soars, the country’s mangrove forests and the livelihoods of shellfish gatherers are under threat from encroaching farms and unchecked pollution 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, w...

By Isabel Alarcón, Lise Josefsen Hermann and Marcello Rossi. Photos by Vicho Gaibor and Patricio Terán