- Under agreements for sustainable use and protection, Ecuador’s environment ministry has granted concessions for 98,000 hectares (about 242,000 acres) of mangrove forests to artisanal fishers in the Gulf of Guayaquil.
- The fishers can catch crabs to sell, but are committed to the protection of this valuable ecosystem, imposing closed seasons twice a year and refraining from catching female and juvenile crabs.
- The concessions represent 62% of the total area of mangrove forests in Ecuador, of which 80% are located in the Gulf of Guayaquil.
- This system has allowed for the conservation of mangroves for 26 years and has been shown to be effective in protecting this type of forest, which is capable of retaining up to five times more carbon than other tropical forests.
Puerto Buenavista Island is home to a small village of crab catchers and fishers in the middle of the waters of the Gulf of Guayaquil in Ecuador. There are only 30 families, 140 people, and their homes, built very close to each other, form a line of blues, reds, yellows and greens. Access to Puerto Buenavista is only via an artisanal pier, made of wood so delicate that it looks like it could fall apart at any time. Along the shore, heavily eroded by the water that hits it every rainy season, 10 crab catchers gather to have a conversation.
The journey to Puerto Buenavista is a one-hour boat ride from Caraguay Market, in southern Guayaquil. The brackish water along the way is a mixture of currents from the Daule and Babahoyo rivers and the Pacific Ocean. Throughout the entire trip, one is surrounded by the intense green mangrove forests, interrupted only along a few stretches by pools used for shrimp farming.
The crab catchers discuss their fishing routines, the way they distinguish between male and female crabs just by sight, and their method of luring crabs out of their burrows using a meter-long rod. But they also discuss the “rounds” they make for vigilance, making sure that no one cuts down, damages or invades the mangrove forests. They are crab catchers, they say proudly. But they are also guardians — the guardians of the mangroves.
Hectare for hectare, a mangrove forest can store five to seven times as much carbon as other forest types, even more than the tropical rainforest of the Amazon. Found on coastlines, mangrove forests also serve as protection for human communities against natural disasters.
“For us, mangroves are life and sustenance,” says César Rodríguez, the president of Puerto Buenavista. At 25 years old, with a youthful face and smile, he has held this role for only four months. “If there were no mangroves, how would we breathe this air that we have? And where would we [earn a living] for our families?”
The Puerto Buenavista Artisanal Fishing Association, which began with 18 crab catchers and now has 25, has been part of the Mangrove Ecosystem Sustainable Use and Custody Agreements (AUSCEM) program for 11 years. Through this program, Ecuador’s former environment ministry (which was merged under the mining and energy ministry earlier this year) granted sections of mangrove forests as concessions. This way, crab catchers can earn an income while also serving as guardians of the mangroves.
The program began in 1999 and, according to experts, been an effective mechanism for protecting the ecosystems after a massive amount of mangrove logging between the 1970s and 1980s due to the “shrimping boom” and urban expansion. During that time, Ecuador lost more than 27% of its mangroves.
According to data from the environment ministry, more than 98,000 hectares (about 242,000 acres) of mangroves belong to concessions under the program across the five coastal provinces of Guayas, Esmeraldas, El Oro, Manabí and Santa Elena. This represents 62% of the 157,000 hectares (388,000 acres) of mangrove forests in the country. An additional 10 applications are being considered.
Experts say this program is the reason that mangroves have remained almost intact during this century in Ecuador: putting these communities in charge of mangrove forests generates a sense of belonging and, therefore, a strong desire to protect them. Under this program, community members fill gaps in the government’s work, especially when it’s difficult for the government to exercise effective control in areas as remote as Puerto Buenavista.
The communities that inhabit the shores along the Gulf of Guayaquil play an important role, since 80% of Ecuador’s mangroves are located there.
The environment ministry told Mongabay that by being part of this program, crab catchers are committing to protecting the ecosystem and reporting any impacts, submitting a management plan and complying with it, using only permitted fishing gear, and abiding by closed-season regulations and minimum catch sizes.
Care and protection
The crab catchers’ lives revolve around the mangroves, where their quarry is the red crab (Ucides occidentalis). Their craft is passed down and taught to children. Because their concession only allows for the harvesting of adult male crabs, a new crab catcher’s first task is to learn how to differentiate these from female crabs and young juveniles.
“[A crab catcher] begins by seeing the size of a hole and the amount of mud that a crab throws out of its burrow,” says one of the crab catchers gathered on the shore. “A big hole with a lot of mud — it’s a male,” another explains. “In summer, you can also see the size of a [crab’s] footprint in the sand.”
Rodríguez, the Puerto Buenavista president, offers a more technical explanation: “On the males, [the body is] thin [and] flat; on females, it’s rounded, like a belly. There’s no way to miss it. Also, the legs of a female are small, with plenty of little dots. The [legs] of a male are large and smooth, without dots. From far away, you can already tell if it is male or female.”
Rodríguez bought his boat on credit and paid it off in a year and a half. He now earns the equivalent of $250 per month, thanks to his work in sustainable crab catching.
The Puerto Buenavista Association has 450 hectares (about 1,110 acres) of forest under its protection. Members of the association work from Monday to Saturday; on a good day, Rodríguez says, he can catch about 56 crabs, gathering them up into a long bundle. The crab catchers can sell these bundles at Caraguay Market for the equivalent of $45-$50.
On Sundays, they take turns, in alphabetical order, patrolling around the mangrove forest. They call it their “guard routine.”
“Every routine takes two hours, and two people go,” Rodríguez says.
Over the course of 11 years, they’ve only found people cutting down their mangroves once. That was in 2016, and the suspects were staff from one of the area’s shrimp farms. They contacted the environment ministry, as established in the agreement, and the authorities took action. They haven’t seen any logging since in the concession.
There’s no potable water, sewage system or any type of phone service on the island of Puerto Buenavista. There is wireless internet, which only works in a few spots, and a community-bought generator that supplies electricity in evening. The community gets its freshwater from a well, and its drinking water from boats that sell it as they pass by the island each week.
The island’s school, named after Nobel-winning Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, is located behind the small village, surrounded by a convenience store, a church, and an old woman who can see everything through her window.
There’s no high school. When children reach the age of 14 or 15, it becomes their time to catch crabs.
Twice a year, the crabbing season is closed: in February, which is the crabs’ mating season, and in August or September, when the crabs molt their shells. During these periods, the crab catchers stock up and stay mostly at home.
The importance of mangroves
“Life in the mangrove forest is really a spectacle,” says biologist Natalia Molina, a researcher and professor from the School of Environmental Sciences at Espíritu Santo University in Guayaquil. Ecologically, she says, mangrove forests are unique. The trees are considered amphibious, because they live between the water and the land, and the water itself is brackish, a mixture of both saltwater and freshwater.
This gives mangroves an incredible ability to retain carbon. In this case, it’s known as “blue carbon,” since it’s part of a coastal or marine ecosystem.
“There is a richness of organic carbon [coming from living organisms] that is stored in mangroves, at a higher speed and in greater quantities than in other ecosystems,” Molina says.
Why do mangroves retain so much carbon? The exchange of freshwater and saltwater allows for nutrients to cycle much more rapidly than in other ecosystems: when the tide rises, plenty of marine organisms arrive, helping with degradation. When the tide is low, an enormous number of bacteria are present, speeding up the biogeochemical processes in the ground.
“In tropical rainforests, all the organic material is washed away from the ground by rain, and the carbon is in the parts exposed to air [aerial biomass],” Molina says. “In mangrove forests, the organic material and carbon accumulate in the ground, up to 2 meters [6.6 feet] deep.”
Mangrove trees are typically strong and have vertical support, allowing them to grow tall to compete for sunlight. For that reason, they produce large quantities of leaf litter, which decomposes rapidly thanks to the unique complexes of bacteria. All this gives rise to carbon storage. “And a third factor is the constant exchange of nutrients because of the tide’s influence,” Molina says.
There are also benefits for the communities living around these trees. “They have a much cleaner environment [and] cleaner air, which benefits their health,” Molina says. “And now, there are even talks of looking for economic compensation for the blue carbon that mangroves retain, which could represent an additional benefit for these people.”
She notes that the value per ton of blue carbon retained by mangroves hasn’t yet been determined.
In 2024, Molina’s team published the Guide to Mangroves in Ecuador, identifying 13 species of mangrove trees found along the country’s coastline. Four are listed as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN Red List, one as near threatened, seven as species of least concern, and one hasn’t been evaluated for the list.
Molina compares the various species to the members of a team. On the front line are red mangroves (Rhizophora mangle), which play a protective role. “Mangroves protect the coastline [and] capture the salinity coming from the ocean. Anywhere the mangroves have been removed, the ground becomes saline. They also protect us from storm surges and rough waters,” she says.
In the second line, slightly more inland, there are white (Laguncularia racemosa) and black mangroves (Avicennia germinans) with pencil-sized roots, which play the important role of stabilizing the ground. Behind them, in the third line, are what Molina calls the “specialists.” These include the button mangrove (Conocarpus erectus), whose shed leaves serve as food for many organisms.
“It is wonderful architecture: a condominium with space for everyone,” Molina says.
Avoiding the trap
Just a 10-minute boat ride from Puerto Buenavista Island is Puerto Roma Island, the most populous island in the Gulf of Guayaquil. Ninety-five percent of its 1,500 residents depend on crab catching. Puerto Roma’s main pier is large and solid. It has a community headquarters, a soccer field and a long street that starts out dry, but ends up as muddy as the mangrove forests. Alongside several boats at the pier, crab catchers wash their quarry.
The community, like so many others, was built by migration. “My grandfather told me that at first, there were three small houses,” says Máximo Jordán, the president of the May 21st Association. “Later, there were eight, 15, and it kept growing. There are people from all different areas, and they learned to become crab catchers.”
Like on Puerto Buenavista, there’s no drinking water or phone service on Puerto Roma either. The internet only arrived with COVID-19, for children forced into remote learning. They have a more powerful generator, and electricity is available for longer.
There are 316 crab catchers in Puerto Roma: 230 in the May 21st Association and 86 in the October 4th Cooperative. Together, they administer 3,000 hectares (about 7,400 acres) of mangrove forests. To carry out their patrols, they gather into groups of about a dozen and make four “rounds” per week. “They aren’t fixed days — they rotate. So do the hours: sometimes 5 or 6 a.m., or sometimes 2 or 3 p.m.,” Jordán says.
In 11 years of using this system of concessions, there have been no recorded cases of logging. But the participating crab catchers still have to fight every week against invaders indiscriminately catching crabs in their mangrove forests. These non-local crab catchers place nets over the entrance to a crab’s burrow, which traps the animal as it comes out. The invaders pin the nets down with mangrove roots that they break off and drive in like stakes. This not only harms the mangrove trees, but also many female crabs and their young.
“Each female crab can have more than 260,000 young at a time, and they capture them with traps. This is prohibited, but it is done,” Jordán says. That’s why when they catch someone setting one of these traps, they make them stop. They also remove traps and free any female crabs caught in them during their rounds.
The effectiveness of the system
“If we had not had this strategy [of granting concessions of mangrove areas], right now we would have a lot less mangrove [forest],” says Molina, the university biologist. “If we are only talking about vegetation, in 37 years [between 1969 and 2006], we lost 27%, which is equal to some 56,000 hectares [about 138,000 acres]. But if we count the salt ponds — the terraces within the mangrove forest that play a vital role — then we lost 50% … With these strategies [like the patrols], we’ve been able to contain the logging.”
The Guide to Mangroves in Ecuador reads, in part: “On a national level, mangroves have been exploited to obtain timber, carbon and tannins. But the most significant impact has been the conversion of mangrove zones into areas for aquaculture, salt production and agriculture … Between the 1970s and the 1990s alone, Ecuador lost 27.6% of its mangrove forests, mainly due to the shrimp industry and urban expansion.”
The shrimp industry is important to Ecuador’s economy. In the first four months of 2025, it accounted for the country’s largest non-oil exports, valued at more than $1.8 billion (for 326,000 metric tons).
In the Gulf of Guayaquil, it is easy to spot where mangrove forests have been cut down to make room for shrimp ponds. The fishers’ boats frequently cross paths with barges that carry tons of shrimp feed and equipment used by shrimp exporters.
Pablo Guerrero, director of marine conservation at WWF Ecuador, has spent five years studying Ecuador’s mangrove forests. He identifies three phases in their fight against the shrimp ponds. First, he says, was the “shrimping boom,” when deforestation accelerated as new ponds were established. Next came what Guerrero describes as the “stabilization phase,” from 1990-2000, when the expansion of logging stopped. The third and current phase is a period of recuperation for the mangroves, thanks to the concession agreements.
“It is a fantastic strategy,” Guerrero says, “because the environment ministry doesn’t have the ability to control remote areas. Having this community empowered — with the rights they are given through the concessions to manage the area — is good, because they are the most interested in conserving everything. And they are providing a service to the government, which is in Quito and Guayaquil, far from where the action is.”
A small amount of logging still occurs, mainly by shrimp farmers or people looking for timber, but the total area covered by mangrove forest has been stable for 26 years, which proponents of the community concession program say is a “good indicator.”
A 2019 paper published by the Private Technical University of Loja analyzed 20 areas under concession in El Oro province and concluded they “are an effective tool for the conservation of the mangrove ecosystem and for the economy of ancestral communities.”
Along with organizations like Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, WWF forms part of the Global Mangrove Alliance. WWF Ecuador includes community members, scientists and academics.
As part of its work, WWF Ecuador has provided communities like Puerto Buenavista with computers and radios for communication, and it has also helped to outline and mark concessions and develop reports. “The important part is that the communities have control over themselves,” Guerrero says.
The future
The crab catchers smile spontaneously as Rodríguez, the president of Puerto Buenavista, says that being part of the conservation agreements has been a good decision. “It has served to protect the mangroves [and] understand their importance, as well as that of our crustacean: the crab. We want this to be long term, reaching all of us. It feels like it is ours, our mangrove. For that reason, we take care of it like this, so that no one cuts it down and nobody comes to invade it,” Rodríguez says.
The sun hasn’t completely come out yet, and at times, dark clouds seem to linger over the Gulf of Guayaquil: U.S. President Donald Trump’s decisions regarding international cooperation have forced organizations that once received U.S. support to suspend their work. However, WWF’s Guerrero says his organization is searching for other sources of funding to be able to resume its work in the mangroves.
The trip back takes another hour; upon arriving in Guayaquil, the first thing a person sees is Caraguay Market, the largest seafood market in Ecuador. But the crab catchers of the gulf stay in their towns, protecting the mangroves.
Banner image: One of the crab catchers from Puerto Roma after a day’s work. Image by Alexis Serrano Carmona.
This story was first published here in Spanish on Sept. 11, 2025, as a collaboration between La Barra Espaciadora (of Ecuador) and Mongabay Latam.
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