Last Day at CEDO

Today is our last day at CEDO. To sat rt off the day we went kayaking at one of the local estuaries in Puerto Penasco. It was amazing to see all of the life estuaries support. From bird, to fish, to crabs, to shrimp. And tons of plant life as well. In this estuaries they also have an oyster farm. They have this floating platforms that are tied not to far off shore. The families that harvest the oysters buy oysters as spat, which is when the oyster is at this stage in its life that it will be sessile. The oysters they buy are called Japanese oysters (but they are from Mexico). They use this oyster because it is bigger and grows faster then the local oysters they have here, and this oyster does not harm the local species. But because  of the tides and temperature of the water they cannot reproduce on there own. So these families buy mass quantities of oysters and put them on the floating platforms and let them grow for about an year. Then they harvest the oysters again and sale them. Part of the money they get goes towards the government and the other goes towards their family.
When families first started to harvest oysters in the area there was a lot of family members helping, but as the fresh water stopped coming into the estuary and the local oysters were more difficult to harvest families left. But when they started using Japanese oysters more family members started to come to the estuary to help harvest oysters. Kayaking though the estuary was more then a workout, it opened my eyes to how important estuaries are and how important sea life is for the surrounding community.