Mirrors (10 page)

I met Muñoz
in the lobby at daybreak. He descended the steps gingerly, and when he reached the bottom, stretched his back one way, then the other.

“I need coffee bad,” he moaned.

We walked across the street to the plaza where a vendor tended a cart. After buying coffee and rolls, we sat on a bench and dipped bread into our steaming brews as we listened to the rustle of El Coco’s palms. It was a hot, tropical breeze that prevented one from moving faster than a crawl.

Muñoz peered across the plaza. “Time to go,” he said, pointing to Rendondo’s truck.

We joined our colleague and drove through town, a trip that afforded a closer view than that provided by the airplane. Here, the inescapable blemishes of poverty were ubiquitous: ramshackle stilted huts; canals run afoul with raw sewage; and mangy, bedraggled dogs lurking about. At one point, we drove past a group of barefoot boys playing soccer on a dirt street, and as we passed, I waved at one. At first, my target hesitated to return the gesture, as if a socio-cultural divide too wide to span separated us, but then, as we rounded a bend, I saw him break forth with a beaming smile. If visitors were common here, it wasn’t apparent; the looks I received made me feel I came from a distant planet.

We left the shanties for sugar cane fields, eventually climbing a hill that looked over El Coco in the distance. With the exception of the church and plaza, it looked like a ragged heap, a dumpster overturned by the Pacific. Along the northern edge of town was the mountain of refuse I had seen the night before, its fire still smoldering, yet even in daylight, it was difficult to tell where the trash ended and the shanties began.

The road from the summit turned toward the coast, exposing a festoon of pools that comprised the shrimp farm. In short order, we came to a sign pointing toward the
Enterpresa de Mariscos
, or shrimp farm, but rather than follow the arrow, we turned onto a less-traveled route.

We passed more sugar cane along a road that narrowed to the point I had to pull my arm in to keep from getting cut by leaves. After a while, the stalks ended and we came to a field of shrubs sloping toward the sea.

We left the truck and followed a path to the coast where Redondo pulled on a rope secured to a pole. A small boat emerged from the mangroves. He held it steady as I clambered aboard. Muñoz followed suit, only he almost fell from the weight of the duffle bag he toted. Redondo, in contrast, hopped in with ease and, taking a seat at the rear, started the engine with a few pulls of the cord. Before long, we set out on a sinuous course through a canopy of red mangroves, taking care to dodge their bowed roots. The water, olive-brown, looked like a nutrient-rich soup simmering in an equatorial kettle. Here and there, bubbles burped to the surface as if some furtive fermentation were concocting a marine cocktail. Along each channel, networks of cinnamon-colored roots coalesced into trunks, which, in turn, splayed into lattices of branches with thick, oval leaves.

After rounding one of many bends, I was startled when a flamingo lifted from the water, its legs retracting like landing gear. I tried to follow its path but lost it beyond the tops of mangroves that had grown tall enough to obscure the coastal hills. At one point, when the water became shallow, Redondo cut the motor and tilted it forward. As we glided along, my ears tuned to a new chorus: buzzing insects, chirping birds, and mysterious splashes from unseen creatures.

“
Cangrejo
,” Redondo said, pointing to a crab resting on a branch. Using a paddle, he steered us through the forest, the shade offering a cool respite from the sun.

Upon leaving the canopy, the boat jiggled. I looked back and saw Redondo donning a pair of booties. He eased into the water and came to the bow to pull us toward a muddy mound. Before we reached it, however, a thick sulfur smell filled the air, the sort I recalled from childhood whenever my mother prepared egg salad sandwiches for lunch. I buried my nose in my shirt and marveled at Redondo’s imperviousness to the odor.

When we reached the mound, he pushed an arm into the mud. Lifting it, he displayed an enormous clam, larger than any I’d ever seen. He brought it to the boat.

“A meal itself,” I chuckled.

Redondo spoke solemnly.

“He says they’re rarely that size anymore. The big ones are disappearing.”

“
Chímicos
,” Redondo retorted.

It made me think he understood more English than he let on. He launched an impassioned speech.

“Pollution from the farm,” Muñoz reported. “Fertilizers, insecticides, oil and diesel, all washing into the sea … stunting shellfish … driving fish to deeper waters.”

Redondo returned the clam to its home. With remarkable ease, he slipped back into the boat and restarted the motor, although this time, we headed toward open water. After skirting the shore for a distance, we came to the first of the farm’s pools, its earthen levy reaching above a cement wall that abutted the sea. Rising along the cement was a stairway leading to the levy’s rim. Redondo steered the boat to the steps and moored along a rail.

“We’ll take a quick view of a pool before we continue to the office,” Muñoz said.

I followed the duo up the steps. At the top, we came to a sign warning,
Propiedad privada
. Beyond it, myriad pools stretched along the coast with each connected to the next by walkways, pipes, and hoses. Here and there, plumbing leaks sent miniature fountains skyward as an incessant hum of aeration devices, pumps, and generators drowned the sound of lapping waves.

I knelt and surveyed a pool before us. It appeared to be shallow at one end—three feet or so—yet progressively deeper toward the other. The water teemed with shrimp, most six- to nine-inches long, their antennae dark brown and bodies grayish-white. Sprouting from their abdomens were busy legs and a dark tail fan rimmed in yellowish green—all in all, most attractive, I thought.

“Is that the glowing pond we saw last night?” I asked, pointing ahead.

It was a lone circular body set back from the other pools, and in the daylight, its bioluminescence was no longer apparent.

I removed a vial from the duffle bag along with a small net and a pair of shoulder-length rubber gloves.

“What are you doing?” Muñoz asked.

“Getting a sample from that pond,” I replied.

“Later,” he advised. “We haven’t gotten permission yet to take samples.”

“What if they prevent us from sampling that pond?”

He frowned. “Work fast!”

I scrambled to the pond where I donned both gloves. Kneeling, I dipped the vial into the water with one hand while I swept the net through the water with the other. It proved to be more challenging than I expected to ensnare shrimp, so I stretched onto my stomach to make wider swaths with the net. I seemed only to startle the critters which shot past the net with dexterous speed. At one point, when several shrimp bumped the net’s rim, I recoiled and dropped the vial. Helplessly, I watched it sink to the bottom.

“Hurry!” Muñoz called.

I waved to him for help.

He appeared at my side. Seeing my predicament, he said: “Why’d you drop it?”

“I didn’t mean to! Hold my legs while I stretch for it.”

I submerged my arm toward the vial and braced for shrimp to bump me, but none did. After retrieving the vial, I handed it to Muñoz and adopted a new strategy, this time holding the net still as the passing current extended its tapered end. Before long, several shrimp swam into the net, and I transferred them to the vial.

“Let’s go!” Muñoz implored.

I removed the gloves and scurried to the boat. As we headed off, I labeled the vial and packed it on ice. Before long, we reached a pier where a husky, fair-skinned man waved to us. He had sandy blonde hair that flitted over his eyes, leading him to flick his head to clear the view. A pair of binoculars hung from his neck.

“I’m Dudley Zot,” he called, “owner of the shrimp farm. You’re my visitors from the U.S., I assume?”

“Yes, I’m Milo Ramírez,” Muñoz said, stepping off the boat. “And this is Oscar Fields.”

We shook hands.

With a dismissive nod, Zot acknowledged Redondo who, in turn, quickly turned the boat to sea.

To us, Zot said: “I thought you’d be coming by land.” His face turned stern.

“We toured the mangroves,” Muñoz replied. “They speak to the health of the sea.”

“And what did you find?”

“They’re in good shape.”

“You saw more than mangroves,” Zot noted, tapping his binoculars.

“Indeed, we viewed the pools at the distant end.”

“And took a sample.”

“Which I told you by phone I intended to do for quality control purposes,” Muñoz said.

Offset, it seemed, by the confrontational nature of our meeting, Zot broke into a smile. “Not a problem.”

He led us to a cluttered modular unit ill-equipped to handle visitors. After clearing off a pair of seats, he said, “I lived here until my business produced sufficient revenues to build a home. Perhaps you saw it on the hill last night from the airplane.”

“Yes,” Muñoz replied. “Business appears to be good.”

Zot leaned back. “Now, perhaps, but it wasn’t always that way; the export market is a competitive place.”

“Do you export all your shrimp?”

“Yes, to the U.S. currently, but I’m hoping to begin exporting to Japan shortly.”

“Have you had any problems with white spot disease?” I asked. On the flight south, I had read about ailments that afflicted shrimp, white spot among them, a viral infection that led to progressive calcium deposition that caused shrimp to become emaciated before dying.

“Not an issue,” Zot said, “because we raise our own larvae to keep the farm virus-free.”

“No wild shrimp?”

“None.”

“Yet, you pump seawater into the pools,” I noted.

“True, but we treat it with ultraviolet light to kill any pathogens that might be present.”

“Where’s the hatchery for your larvae?” Muñoz asked.

“In the warehouse. I’ll show you.”

We followed Zot outside but stopped at the nearest pool. Like the ones we had seen earlier, it brimmed with shrimp.

“It may look crowded, but don’t fret,” Zot said. “We stock our pools at a lower density than industry standards to reduce stress on the shrimp.” He pointed to the water. “Those are white shrimp, or
Litopenaeus vannamei
.”

An employee approached the pool with a bag from which he tossed pellets into the water.

“We use the highest-quality feed,” Zot boasted. “No rubbish or waste; only premium nutrients.”

I glanced at the label on the bag and my heart leapt—
Manufactured by BioVironics Pharmaceuticals and Neutraceuticals, Germantown, Maryland
; it was the same firm that had produced the juice Danny Rogers consumed.

“Your feed,” I stammered, “how long have you used that brand?”

“For several years. Its’ an excellent product.”

He led us toward a shed at the end of the pool, and as we walked, Muñoz and I exchanged glances. It was clear he was as shaken as I to have seen the name
BioVironics
.

Zot opened the door to the shed. It held a dizzying array of lights and instruments.

“With forty outdoor pools, each roughly the size of Olympic swimming pools, we deal with close to 70,000 cubic meters of water at any given moment,” he proclaimed. “That’s equal to 70 million liters.”

“What’s your water exchange rate?” Muñoz asked.

“Twenty-five percent volume per day, which equates to 12,000 liters per minute.”

“And how much shrimp do you produce each year?”

“About 100 tons.” He closed the door. “To the hatchery …”

“Your accent,” I said as we walked. “I can’t place it.”

“I grew up in Poland but wanderlust took me around the globe. Every few months, I stopped to work to earn cash.” He lit a cigarette. “I dug clams in France, canned salmon in Alaska, and worked on a shrimp boat off Texas. Then I got the urge to start my own business, so I bought this farm.”

The warehouse we entered had a sliding door and vinyl siding. Inside, it reminded me of an aquarium—not the public viewing area, but behind-the-scenes where motors hummed, hoses hissed, and dials displayed secretive readings. There were open tanks, too, multiple ones, different sizes all, each purring with an aerating device. White-coated technicians buzzing about gave the place the feel of a laboratory.

We stopped before a waist-high tank.

“We grow selected males and females here before breeding them via artificial insemination,” Zot explained. “It gives us control over the genetic outcome of the offspring.”

“But I’ve read the yields are lower with artificial insemination than with natural mating,” I observed, recalling another paper I perused on the airplane.

“True, but we trade lower yields for superior genes.”

We approached another tank, this one lined with fine mesh. In the water were tiny creatures that looked more like aquatic spiders than shrimp.

“Those are ‘nauplii,’ ” Zot explained, “freshly hatched from shrimp eggs. Being poor swimmers, they risk getting sucked by filters or injured by bubbles. The mesh protects them from that.”

We moved to a series of tanks of progressively larger size, each housing shrimp in different life stages. At the final tank, Zot said: “These shrimp are called ‘postlarvae.’ They are the product of two more molts following the nauplii stage.”

Unlike the more juvenile forms, to my eye, the postlarvae looked like adult shrimp, albeit smaller in size.

“At the proper time, we transfer postlarvae to an area called the nursery where they grow under carefully-controlled conditions. Following that, we move them to the larger pools outdoors for the so-called grow-out phase, a period that lasts four to five months before the shrimp are harvested.”

He led us to another building, this one refrigerated throughout, where employees packed shrimp on ice. A man with a discernible limp approached us.

“Ah, allow me to make an introduction,” Zot said. “This is Mr. Anton Manovic, a visiting scientist from the United States who is helping us deal with a venomous snake that has been making its way from the mangroves to our pools.” Zot looked at me. “You and Mr. Manovic come from the same neck of the woods.”