Twenty years ago, Bahía was known for one thing: it was a harbour and a fishing town, nothing more. Then national tourists discovered its quiet beaches, and the fish trade changed almost overnight — visitors wanted fresh fish, and hotels and restaurants started buying straight from local fishermen. For a while, it looked like a straightforward win.
It wasn't quite that simple. Prices for everything else in the shops rose alongside the new tourist money, and by his reckoning, fishermen aren't meaningfully better off than they were before — the extra income from fish sales gets absorbed by the higher cost of living around it.
The bigger change, he says, has happened to the young. Surrounded by visible tourist wealth, many now want fast money and see little of it available at home, so they leave for factory work in nearby towns like Portoviejo. Families fracture along the way. Traditional fishing methods, meanwhile, are becoming less viable on their own — not efficient enough to compete.
There should be a way to involve the fishermen in the tourism industry itself, not just sell to it.
A government project with the PMRC is trying to do exactly that, on a small mangrove island in the Chone river delta. Fishermen run the excursions themselves, in partnership with the tour operator Dolphintours, which handles marketing and some logistics. A kilometre-long elevated boardwalk now threads through the mangroves to a lookout post; trained fishermen serve as guides, with an interpreter on hand, and a small exhibition space in the fishing village sells souvenirs made by local families.
The plan, over time, is for the project to run increasingly on its own, with the municipality and PMRC monitoring and adjusting as needed, and Dolphintours' role gradually shrinking. He's confident that once the town has recovered from the earthquake, tourism will pick back up — and that this time, fishermen like him will have a real stake in it, not just a fish counter to sell from.
A fresh fish still sells for more than it used to. Whether that's actually progress, he's still deciding.