Seeking Sustainability

The first time I heard about aquaponics was in 2007 in my water quality and system design aquaculture class in college. My teacher, Ken Riley, briefly explained the concept.  I remember I stopped him right away and asked him “aqua what?" He continue to explain more about the concept, saying "it is a polyculture system used to grow freshwater fish and plants". Ken kept teaching his class, but my mind could not stop thinking of the possibilities of growing fish and plants in a combined environment. I knew from working in the industry how intensive aquaculture systems have a huge amount of waste discharge, needed to be dealt with a series of expensive and complicated filters. I thought, why don't we all use plants or use this waste to feed plants?  Towards the the end of the class, I approached Ken and asked him to explain more about aquaponics. He told  me that the University of the Virgin Islands has been leading the research and development of aquaponics in the last couple of decades. That night I went back home and started researching aquaponics all over the internet.

The more I read about it, the more I got in to it! I learned about how our ancestors in Guatemala and Mexico used chinampas systems and how productive they were.   I imagined how aquaponics could feed communities back home. I was hooked on aquaponics. 

A  week after, Jim Norris the President of Ocean Reefs and Aquariums told me that he wanted me to attend the Caribbean Aquaculture Society Conference held in Puerto Rico. At this conference met the UVI aquaponics researcher group.  I was so stoked to meet them. I  quickly connected with Jason Danaher, one of their main researchers, because his wife is Guatemalan. He encouraged  me to participate in one of their short courses on aquaponics. I looked into it but the price was too much for me at the time.

In 2008 I was going through a transition and stressful  period. I left my job at ORA and was working as a research assistant for FIU. I had a problem with my last roommate and moved into an apartment by myself. My parents where getting divorced in Guatemala. I remembered feeling like I needed a break. I needed to  to get out somewhere. I talked to one of my uncles about my situation and he told me he would sponsor me to go to Puerto Rico for a few days. I remembered about the short course and checked the dates, and the course was offered a couple of week's away.  My uncle told he will sponsor the ticket as long as I will stop in Puerto Rico for a couple of days. I had saved some and therefore was able to finanze the short course. I wrote Jason and told him that I wanted to attend. His first response was that it was too late that they had surpassed capacity of 60 students. I was so sad. The following day I got an email from Jason telling me that he had advocated on my behalf to his colleagues and that they were going to make an exception.  I was in! One week later I attended the short course at UVI. 

The entire trip to UVI had a good vibe to it, like when things are meant to happen.  I remember noticing all sorts of good omen's since my trip for the short course started. A total of 75 students from all around the world (California, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Vietnam, England, Norway and Mexico) attended the course. The short course was held in campus were they had one large scale aquaponics system and several medium scale systems. The course was split between theory and the other half was practical.  My experience in aquaculture became very valuable. I lacked experience in plant cultivation. At the end of the course, I went back to florida with another mentality on the possibilities of aquaponics. In addition,  I became part of a large aquaponics community  that is connected and helps each other. 

Through 2008 and 2009 my friend and roommate, Gregg Delfosse, help me built my first aquaponics system. We successfully grew basil, lettuce and tomatoes using with the waste produced from goldfish. In the following years, I designed and built two other small scale systems. One for a balcony in my apartment in Guatemala city and another one for my ex-girlfriends house.

In 2011 I moved back to Guatemala. My good friend Jose Toriello and myself decided to build a medium scale aquaponic system. We raised some money from mentors and our families, as well as we used some money that Jose had saved. We created a rustic business plan and decided that the location for the system would be the Western Pacific coast of Guatemala, in a community called El Ahumado. The heat and black sandy soil of this community made the site very harsh, creating an opportunity to demonstrate that food can be grown anywhere. We went a step further and included in our system an “incubator”, an area that was designed to grow food for the fish.

In a matter of two months we had a modular system made of 55 gallon barrels for a total of 8 barrels for fish and 16 half barrels to grow plants. We built our incubator component of 4 full barrels and 8 half barrels to grow our fish food. We stocked the system with fish and plants and then we started the process of training the family. Pepe, the eldest of the family, became our system coordinator. Under Pepe’s management, we grew cucumbers, tomatoes and  tilapia. Furthermore, Pepe send us weekly reports via a computer and using a camera we gave him.

Sadly, Pepe and his family did not follow up as Jose and I would have wanted.  We failed in our venture but our reflections pointed out and the mistakes we made. The biggest unlearned lesson was to never impose technologies on people or even worse in whole communities. Instead the approach needs be different. We learned that people need to own their own projects and it has to cost them something. Otherwise we have the tendency to take for granted what it is free and imposed to us.