A Day Sexing Fish

It all began with a rural community's need for water. Really?

Well, actually, yes.

You see, many years ago, the communities of Cuajachillo and Trinidad were spending their meager resources and their days hauling water. Could we help? 

hauling oxcarts of water daily

A Rotary Club, Santa Barbara Sunrise, agreed to partner with us and our local Ciudad Sandino Rotary Club, and many years and a lot of effort later, funding came through.

The water department and the city joined in, and with thousands of volunteer hours and 13+ miles of tubing laid by hand, 576 homes now proudly own one ½" water faucet each. Can you imagine 3,000 people being able to finally wash their hands at home?  Scrub their laundry? Cook and clean?

Wonderful!

Water!

Ah, you say, but what has that got to do with sexing fish?

Well, access to water led to the possibility of developing the economic and nutritional benefits of aquaponic systems. Huh?

Yep. Back to the fundraising drawing board, and again through Rotary, a pilot test project was funded, and now stage two, with 40 backyard systems, is happening.

So Saturday, I drove a vehicle up through bouncing ruts pretending to be called roads, gathering participants to join the agrarian engineer for one of his training days. 

participating in aquaponics training session

We visited six sites. Most were tucked beside tiny homes.

aquaponics system beside tiny rural home

One was a larger one from the pilot project located at a school. Children attending that school had already enjoyed a nutritious fish and vegetable meal from that site, augmenting their free school lunches.

Proud home participants showed off their floating plant beds with thriving insulin, oregano, mint, and other medicinal herbs. Root systems were inspected.

proud system owner demonstrating root health

 

The maturing fish were retrieved, counted, weighed, measured, and yes, sexed… to be able to keep the population male/female ratio thriving and healthy.

carefully retrieving fish for weighing and measuring

These 8-ounce fish will continue to grow until they reach a pound, when they will be harvested and eaten and sold, making room for the smaller ones that are following. And by understanding the reproductive cycle, including the color changes in the male attracting the female, the fertilization process, the role of the female in protecting the eggs for 12 days in her mouth!!!... 12 whole days!!!... before the eggs are ready to hatch into itsy bitsy fish, the participating families learned how to maintain the growth cycle. 

female telapia with tiny eggs in her mouth

Proud? Hot? Excited? Tired? Happy? Yes. The women showing off their systems asked tough questions and problem-solved with the agrarian engineer, chatting over lunch, sharing fish stories and information, heads held high.

lunch and story sharing

And I? I learned to sex fish right along with them.

- Sarah Junkin Woodard

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Donate here to the ongoing work of the CDCA with the poor in Nicaragua:

https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/jhc-cdca