Hatchery production of aquaseed allows for the selection of animals with better growth profiles, improved morphology and pigmentation, higher meat yield, lower losses due to detachment, biotoxins accumulation or resistance to disease. Currently, multiple tools for genetic improvement have shown their reliability and effectiveness in the achievement of these goals.
Abanqueiro, Camariñas, Carril, Noia, Punta Quilma, Vicedo…in recent years many hatcheries and nurseries for the production of bivalve seed have been publicly and generously funded in Galicia. These facilities are now closed, inactive or in decay. The final outcome has been the lack of local production of shellfish seed, coincident with low levels of natural productivity in beaches and parks, and recurrent episodes of unexplained mass mortalities of clams, cockles, oysters and other commercially relevant molluscs. Seed dependence from third countries not only leaves us in a vulnerable position both economically and biologically, favoring the introduction of unknown bacteria, viruses and parasites in local ecosystems. It also represents the failure of the regional strategy for self-sufficiency in mollusk seed, the primary basis for shellfish production and a main engine of economic activity, occupying dozens of vessels and thousands of men and women already suffering from a harsh labor market.
While responsibilities in this field are often multiple and shared, severe mismanagement, absence of business approach, inability to solve complex technical problems, weak linkage between academy, institutions and the real economy, and lack of technical support including monitoring programs designed to ensure entrepreneurial success can be mentioned as the main culprits. Whatever the analysis, it seems difficult to presently justify the allocation of precious public resources in subsidies for the purchase of imported seed, when the infrastructures to produce it locally lay underused, if not abandoned, in our shores.
In light of new technologies for water treatment, specifically developed for these applications, and innovative, successful protocols for larval and nursery rearing, a reasonable strategy would focus on the recovery of these facilities for the local production of seed, a product with strong demand worldwide. This is not only a case of reclaiming valuable production assets for the dinamization of our primary sector, which were funded by taxpayers under special permits in protected natural areas. It is also an essential step in the transition from a fishing to a farming mentality, reducing dependence on state support, taking advantage of a favorable market environment and using these facilities to create the wealth and jobs we so badly require in order to consolidate our recovery.
This failure in the management of aquaseed acquires greater relevance with regards to mussel culture in Galicia. It seems inconceivable that, in the 21st century, the production of more than 200,000 tons per year of this species remains entrusted to the collection of so called “natural” seed. With more than 2,000 floating platforms anchored in our estuaries for this crop, the abuse of the term “natural” is manifest. And obtaining seed from rocks and other coastal substrates through scrapers is now a risky activity, annually increasing conflict by affecting the extraction of other valuable species such as goose barnacles.
These often violent confrontations are frequently handled in a conciliatory manner by the local politicians, enacting both partial closures and extensions of the seed extraction period. Recently the Galician regional administration promotes a project for the production of bivalve seed under the (so far virtual) Next Generation European funds. To put it mildly, those responsible for decades of the aquaseed fiasco must have no shame in order to propose now a multimillion-euro initiative based on supposed technical innovations, which can only be described as esoteric.
But in Galicia it always rains on wet, thus it is worth remembering other occurrences promoted by this same leadership such as the Calizamar case for the use of mussel shell, which ended in the cautionary closure of the facilities by the Guardia Civil, the conviction of the Company management and a huge loss of public funds with serious damage to the taxpayer. Of course, these giant fuck-ups remain conveniently under the carpet, waiting for new generations of young journalists to enjoy much more independent media than current politics have managed to manipulate.
Unfortunately, these horror stories are repeated throughout the Iberian territory, regardless of the political color of their promoters, for way too long. In the Spanish hodgepodge of blundering and lack of management rigor, everything goes: from a public administration promoting productive projects for commercial purposes under public funds, as if in the quinquennial plans of Stalinist Russia, to the direct conflict of interests between managers and beneficiaries of public subsidies, the dilution of individual responsibilities in the institutional abstract or the utterly tribal partisanship in the distribution of financial aid.
When crony populism takes over the political strategy, the lack of independent supervision and the absence of basic integrity criteria spoil the realization of historic opportunities. Not only is the potential for growth, job creation and wealth which aquaculture retains completely wasted. The priceless socio-cultural and know-how capital that fishing has generated for centuries, and that only aquaculture can capitalize, is also dumped in the trash. But the real devil’s seed is the assumption that cronyism, bribery and corruption are inevitable in the management of our taxes, which are not few, and costing us so many sacrifices to pay.