Making more houses and Searching for Sites

The following day I went out with Paul and Diane to search for sites to as how Paul says it, “sink the lobster pots.” Luckily Paul was able to come pick me up at the house on the moto to bring me to Ceyba Park because Erasmo wasn’t around. I love riding on motos; I actually find them a lot more enjoyable than cars because it’s such an adventure, especially on these roads because you have to try to avoid all of the potholes.

Although the boat had been turned upside down, hung upside down from a tree, and the engine filled with water, the boat and motor were undamaged except for the hydraulics in the motor so it couldn’t go up or down, which could cause difficulties if we ran into objects, such as reefs or banks of sand in the river that came up out of nowhere (both of which happened by the way; everything just can’t go according to plan : )). We also forgot the ladder so Paul had to climb up the engine and Paul had to hoist me out of the water while I was trying to kick as hard as I could.

The requirements for the sites that I’m looking for have both seagrass beds and coral reefs, are between 3 and 5 meters deep so they can be reached by free-diving, can be seen from the shore for easy monitoring, and have hard bottoms so that they don’t fill with sand.

The first reef we checked out was renamed Bowsen’s Reef (after Paul and Diane’s dog) and is directly in front of Ceyba Park. Technically, the Marina de Guerra could monitor it with their boat that they never use and actually do something useful besides shooting dolphins and spreading rumors that it was a hammerhead shark that rammed the boat. This reef had brain corals that were almost as large as I was and I saw a school of surgeon fish that was a hundred strong. Some areas of the reef were in better quality than others and while we were snorkeling, a fishing boat with a compressor pulled up. Paul tried to intimidate them by whipping out his camera like he was taking photos. One of the fishermen was even standing up on the reef! Later on, they pulled up alongside us, as if to check us out. Paul coincidentally started strapping on his dive knife to his leg and they left to go fish a different reef. The reef is surrounded by fantastic seagrass, which also gets pretty deep and the visibility is very poor, which would be good for hiding lobster houses. However, as we saw, this reef gets a lot of traffic.

We then took off to Los Mameyes to find another reef that would be easily seen from that beach. We headed seaward and the water kept getting deeper so Paul suggested that we should try to find a different site, such as one that’s close to the Twin Tanks because he is going to be going there often to take tours. The downside is that it is at least an hour’s sail from Ceyba Park and longer from Los Mameyes. One the way there, we came across another reef and decided to check it out. This reef was mainly seagrass beds but had some patchy coral reefs, which I think would be an interesting comparison with the rich coral reefs of the other site. Also, there were a lot of fish despite the quality of the reefs. I saw a sea turtle and even what I think was a baby lobster! I also got my first glimpse of a lion fish, which are an invasive species and were recently added to the eco-survey list of species to identify. I talked to one of the fishermen in Los Mameyes and he says that he has seen a lot of them, and whenever he sees them, he kills them.

While I was out searching for lobster sites, Fran talked to some fishermen from the Bahamas here on vacation that use lobster houses! They said that they have lobster houses that have one small opening on one end that is on the alternate side on the other end, allowing the lobsters to take shelter from the current. To me, this sounds problematic beca

use the houses could become filled with sand more easily because it can’t exit. Fran and company also had managed to make seven more lobster houses without any guidance! This may or may not be good. They had somehow managed to find additional space on the tarp, hopefully on flat ground. Also, they had modified the cement recipe that Kelvin suggested from 26 shovelfuls arena, 13 shovelfuls gravillita, and one bag of cement, to 30 shovelfuls of arena, 10 shovelfuls of gravilla, and 15 shovelfuls of gravillita. This means that I can’t return the gravilla like I planned; oh well, you can only be in so many places at once.

Here's some photos of the set up. The frames were laid out on a tarp on the beach on the flattest ground available.

Here's a photo of the Dominican way of mixing concrete. Just make a pile of limestone, cement and gravel, mix it up, make an indentation, pour as much water as needed, and go!

Here's a photo of pouring concrete. To get the concrete to fit into the sides, the concrete had to have a higher water content.

Construction Day Numero Uno

I could hardly sleep the night before because I was nervous and had drunk a cup of coffee at 9 at night, which was a very bad idea, especially since I have broken my addiction to coffee and it effects me greatly again. We had an early morning and got to the ferreteria as soon as they opened at 8 in the morning to make sure that they sent us the varilla de 1/8” (iron bar) and camion filled with gravillita as soon as possible so that we could get started. We had a motoconcho go pick up the varilla. I thought it was quite a sight to see two kids on a moto dragging along 10 twenty foot long sections of varilla. I told Kelvin and he said, “Where have you been? You’ve been here 2 months and you haven’t seen crazy things like people carrying a pig on a moto?” I haven’t seen that, but I have seen some crazy shit being carried on motos and I don’t think I will ever tire of it. Like many people who come to the DR, I want to make a photo essay of all of the crazy moto loads that go by.

We headed back to the beach and put together the frames around the varilla that had been welded together. We cut 1.3 m lengths of the 1/8” varilla and tied them to the frames with alambre dulce. Eight were tied on lengthwise and four were bent and tied on horizontally. We got a lot of help from the kids.

We also cut all of the boards that we would need to construct the frames the next day.

Then we laid out the tarp on the flattest ground available that was right in front of the bar. There was enough space for seven casitas and we gathered together scraps of lona that were conveniently clinging to Fran’s roof and some cardboard that was laying around and placed the three remaining casitas we constructed the wooden frames to put around the welded varilla. There were two pieces that went lengthwise that were approximately 1.4 m long. The inside pieces were trimmed so that they wouldn’t hang over the outside pieces. We used wood that was 1 x 10 x 14 ft. The trimmed part we were planning to use to cover the ends but we realized that we would need more than one nail to make cover the cement coming out of the sides so we had to cut more boards. We only ended up making 10 frames because the wood is the most expensive investment in making the houses and can be reused a day after the houses are made. The nails are removed and the boards peeled off. The houses still are not dry enough to be moved though. That can happen after two days, as we found out since we had to prop up some of the houses to make the final three.

Making the Frames

To make the frames, we hired a welder that lives in los Mameyes named Alé. He charged us RD $300 pesos per house, about 8 US dollars. If we ask him again to weld some frames, hopefully he will lower his price because as you see here, he actually hardly did any of the work and hired two younger guys to do it. As Darien and I learned from hiring someone from the ferreteria to cut the varilla, supervision is necessary so we camped out in white picnic chairs for a few hours to make sure that all the dimesions were correct. When I ordered the varilla to be cut from the ferreteria, I asked for the length of 20 feet to be cut into 1.3 m pieces (51 inches). When we picked up the varilla the next day, we saw that it had been cut to different lengths that were around 1.3 m. The employee had to recut them all over again. A back-breaking task because he was using a hand-saw. The 3/8" varilla frame consists of three straight pieces and three bent pieces that have legs that are 15 cm long. The day before, we had shown Alé the video on how to make them that Kelvin had given us to make sure he got the idea.

This is me practicing quality control.

The welders here use almost no protection from the sparks. When they are welding, they just close their eyes so they are not damaged. Luckily it didn't affect the quality of there work and we had 20 perfectly welded houses. Alé could make 20 frames in one day, as long as there is constant power of course.

Construction Craziness!

These last few days getting ready for the construction have been very stressful and I was glad that yesterday ended with a beer on the beach and a delicious dinner at Coco Loco, although Darien got pocked in the eye with a stick... She never gets a break. I have to mention here that I have never participated in a construction project before.

I've been learning a lot about construction lately and the employees at Ferreteria Los Vecinos are probably wondering who the hell are these gringas who are coming in here? Why the hell are they ordering enough cement to build a house and the materials would cost almost 2,000 US dollars? They are right in questioning us though because we don't know what the hell we are doing due to a combination of faulty information, personal error, and the differences between Dominican and American culture. All I have to say is thank god one of the employees grew up in New Jersey and even spoke English with a Jersey accent! Also for Victor for always being online to answer my never-ending questions about lobster houses. Both of these guys saved us from disaster yesterday.

So the day before yesterday I went to the ferreteria to order the varilla that we need to build the lobster house frames by myself. I ordered 10 3/8" varilla (iron rebar), which I asked to be cut into 4 1.3 m pieces. I went by myself and was so proud that I had been able to communicate what I actually needed in Spanish. Later on, I learned that varilla is actually usually sold in quintares, which is a unit of a hundred pounds. There are 13 varillas of 3/8" in one quintar. After I dropped off the varilla at Alé's, I realized that I only had bought enough varilla for 6 houses.

Yesterday I returned to the ferreteria and ordered 14 more 3/8" varilla, along with all of the other material that Kelvin told us to get, 10 m3 of arena de caliza (limestone), 20 m3 of gravel, and 20 bags of cement, which would be enough to build a small house! We did the calculations and only these magerials, without the boards for the outside frame, would cost 1200 US dollars! This number is much higher than the budget of 900 US dollars that I had calculated a few weeks ago that would cover the entire pilot project. Luckily I talked to Victor online and he said that was also way too much material for the 20 houses, meaning that something was wrong.

After telling Darien about the exorbant costs this project was accuing and the fact that Victor thought something was also wrong with the amount of materials, she descided to accompany me to the ferreteria. We went to go pick up the varilla and saw that each of the pieces measured different lengths, luckily longer than 51 inches (the equivalent of 1.3 m). We had to ask the employee to recut them, which is a laborous task because each of them is cut by handsaw. This same situation happened with the latrine project that Henry and Aaron did. You have to look over their shoulder to make sure that everything is exact. You can't take it for granted that they are going to cut each of the pieces to exactly 1.3 m like they would in the States.

We tracked down the employee who was going to deliver the cement and I tried to explain to him in Spanish that we wanted to cancel our huge order and place a smaller one once we figured out how much material to buy. The entire time he was smiling slyly and Darien asked him if he would like to talk in English instead. It turns out that he was born in Miches but had lived 35 years of his life in New Jersey! He even spoke English with a Jersey accent! I've never appreciated English words as much as I did then. He made a phone call to one of his friends who was an engineer and he figured out that we only needed to buy 1 m3 of gravel, 1 m3 of limestone, and 11 bags of cement, dividing our costs by 40! That was a big relief. I don't know how we are going to explain to Kelvin about the mistakes on the materials list he sent us.

We dropped off the correctly cut pieces of rebar to Alé's house and told his wife that we would be back in the morning to show him some videos on how to construct the houses and to look over his shoulder while he is making the first few to make sure that the first few are done correctly and that he understands the process, now that we know that is necessary. We also need to make sure that the materials got dropped off at Frank's house yesterday. He hasn't called us, which could mean that everything went smoothly or that the materials never got dropped off. We still have to buy the rebar that will be used on the houses as mesh to go over the rebar frame but we need Kelvin's input because his instructions are not clear. We also need to hang up the avisos in all of the fishing communities to inform them about the project but are waiting on a project summary. The saga continues.

On a happy note, I'm writing this on my laptop! It has survived the flood. : ) Thank goodness for engineers that live at La Loma and for Paul for braving the floods at Ceyba Park to rescue it from the office for me!

Planning for the Big Construction

The lobster house workshop is less than a week away and the days are getting more stressful as the big days approach. It has been raining all week and doesn't show signs of stopping anytime soon.

This morning it took me two hours to print off the avisos we are going to hang up at the pescaderias and the beaches where the fishermen bring in their catch. The avisos tell the fishermen not to fish inside an area marked with red buoys because it is part of a scientific study. We have the support of CODOPESCA, SEMARENA, and the Marina de Guerra, so if anyone sees someone disturbing the houses, they are to call the numbers on the flyer. The first time I went to print out the avisos, PyP, the business that we also buy our wireless from, was closed. The second time they had run out of yellow ink and said that they wouldn't be able to get more ink until Monday or Tuesday. The aviso still prints in color and the red shows up, which is the most important component, but it looks weird. After consulting with Darien, we decided to go with the aviso in color over the black and white.

We've bargained with a local welder named Ale to weld the frames together before the workshop so that they will be ready. He started off asking for 500 pesos per house but we were able to get it down to 300 pesos per house, which is still a lot of money at $US 166. Today we are hopefully going to buy the materials and bring them to his house. I went to the ferreteria at 1 but it was closed like all of the other businesses in Miches for the lunch hour (12-2). So I'm going to have to go try again. Hopefully, they are open tomorrow as well, or else we are going to have to buy all of the materials today and bring them to Frank's house. Hopefully the rain will cease by then because I don't think concrete likes getting wet.

Frank is the fisherman who is going to monitor the lobster houses for me. He is going to get possession of the lobster houses when the project is over and will be able to collect the legally harvestable lobsters from the houses during the project while he's collecting the data. He is the one who rents all of the fishing equipment to the majority of the fishermen of los Mameyes, hopefully out of respect for him and the chance that they might receive lobster houses of their own from the project if they are successful, they won't disturb the lobster houses. Frank also owns a bar where the lobster information session will be held and we are going to construct the houses on top of his roof.

Yesterday I went to the beach with Darien and Coral to collect bottle caps to help distinguish the houses from each other. Six bottlecaps will be placed into the concrete while it's drying and have a pattern of one or two different colors. I never realized how many different colored bottlecaps there are but there are enough for 20 different color combinations, enough for our 20 houses! We got three fishermen from the beach located by the basketball field to help us. They were part of the fishermen's group headed by Pompilio. Last year Pompilio fished for lobsters but this year he stopped. I still have to ask Carlos why that is...

Lesson in Crustacean Architecture

I've gotten numerous questions as to what exactly is a lobster house, why the hell would I be building them, and general questions about what is involved in making them, I can finally answer them after three weeks of being here. Yesterday we had a meeting with Kelvin Guerrero, who is working on the lobster house project in La Caleta and he gave me a ton of information and has experience making lobster houses and even teaching fishermen how to make them. He's even going to come to Miches to help teach! I'm really excited that everything is falling into place for this project and he is going to be an invaluable resource. He's the guy on the leftholding up the lobster caught from one of the lobster houses they put in at Monte Cristi, a successful pilot project that has shown an increase in lobsters in the 11 lobster houses they put in since 2008. Now they are going to put in 1,000 lobster houses in that location!

There are many reasons why lobster houses work for protecting and catching spiny lobsters. These lobsters are gregarious so they like to stay in groups. Lobster house can contain up to 200 lobsters! The lobsters also release a hormone that tells other lobsters where a good shelter is. They are also nocturnal and hide in crevices close to coral reefs during the day for protection against predators. Here's a photo of lobsters that have taken shelter in a crevice. Many crevices in coral reefs are not large enough to support many lobsters and they are limited, so by providing artificial shelter, you can increase the number of lobsters that survive and allow them to be social. Lobster houses also help fishermen comply with fishing regulations by reducing reef damage due to fishing and lobsters are caught using a net instead of a gaucho, which is a hook that kills the lobster. The net, called a jamo, allows the fishermen to select lobsters that do not have eggs, which are illegal to catch, or are of a commercial size.The lobster fishermen in Miches also use compressors (also called hookahs) to fish for lobsters, which are also illegal. They are usually used for high pressure cleaning but are used by lobster fishermen to stay under water for longer so that they can catch more lobsters. However, there are adverse health effects for using compressors. When the compressor runs out of gas, the fisherman runs out of air and has to make a rapid ascent, sometimes resulting in the bends.

Here’s a photo of two female lobsters with eggs

Fun fact: One lobster can have as much as 50,000 to 1.7 million eggs.

Here's a photo of a lobster house after it has been put into the water. The lobster houses are made from cement, which is partially made from limestone (the same material that corals are made of) and provide a substrate for marine life besides providing shelter for lobsters.

Here are the dimensions for the lobster houses (Sorry about the Spanish and the tiny font)

The lobster houses are made from a wire frame that is welded together and a wire mesh is put on top. Then a wooden frame is added around it and the insides and it is filled with cement. It takes 3-5 days to dry.

Then, the lobster houses are sunk in an area ideally located close to a coral reef, which is where lobsters like to feed during the day, and where there is a hard bottom, which would prevent sand from filling up the lobster house. A GPS is used to mark the locations of the lobster houses because if buoys are used, the houses are susceptible to lobster piracy. To reach the lobster houses, the fishermen either snorkel or SCUBA dive. The houses can be one to 30 meters deep. Two fishermen dive down to the house, one lifts up one end of the lobster house while the other scoops up the lobsters with a jamo. Since the lobsters are afraid of the light they cluster at the back of the house instead of trying to swim away. The lobsters are brought up the surface and only the legal lobsters are kept.

Another fun fact: Lobsters are gregarious and migrate to deeper waters in single file before winter storms

Here's some photos of lobster houses before and after they are put into the water. The lobster houses are made from cement, which is partially made from limestone (the same material that corals are made of) and provide a substrate for marine life besides providing shelter for lobsters.

La Caleta has a few advantages over the lobster fisheries in Miches: 1) it’s a national park so there are many law enforcers, 2) there is already a lobster fishing cooperative in place, 3) there are only 30 lobster fishermen in the cooperative. Although the laws regarding lobster fishing should be enforced everywhere, they are not. While we were at La Gina, one of the fishing communities in Miches, two young Dominicans brought in a bucket of dead lobsters, none of which were even of legal size. The veda on lobster fishing lasts from April to the end of July and they claimed that they had not known about it, although the law has been in effect since 1986. We let them go without any consequence. It’s a problem being a foreigner trying to enforce laws here because Darien and Henry have worked for three years to develop relationships with these fishermen and feel that education is the best way to deal with the overfishing problem because you cannot tell whether the fishermen know the laws or not. However, the fishermen could always claim that they didn’t know the laws. The only solution would be the posting of laws and/or increased enforcement, with consequences such as jail time or boat confiscation; because news would spread fast and people would stop fishing illegally. Although each fishing community in Miches has a CODOPESCA representative that collects fishing data, I don’t know if they could handle collecting the required information from lobster fishers that use casitas. Also, there are many lobster communities that are located far apart that have at least 35 fishers and include Los Mameyes, La Gina, and Sabana de Nisibon.