On the first day of our stay, we visited two sardine canneries on Magdalena Bay, Calmex and Moon Industries. Togerther these two plants harvest about 200 tons of sardines a night 20 days a month. The fishing cycle for sardines is lunar: they cannot be fished when the moon is full, because it.s hard to find them their iridescent bodies glowing in the water, so all of the fishing is done on the days when the moon.s light is not reflecting on the water.

1,000 ton per day processing capacity in Puerto San Carlos

While everyone knows that these 'pesqueras' manufacture sardines for canning and human consumption, the real sardine cash crop here is fishmeal, which is sold to feed the stocks in the chicken and pig industries in Mexico and abroad. The process of creating this fishmeal, called reduction,while lucrative, is not labor intensive, with only 12 employees needed to process 150 tons of fishmeal daily. As you can see from the catch information graphic above, 71% of the sardine catch is the high quality Monterey sardine. Of this high-quality sardine catch, close to 70% of the actual biomass of the sardine catch is being reduced by the century-old burning, or reduction, technique which cooks out most of the protein and makes a low-quality fishmeal. The reduction process, as well as the catching, manual processing, freezing, canning, and storage of sardines, all takes place along a two-mile stretch of sandy shoreline in the town of Puerto San Carlos.

Before beginning our tour of the sardine plants, we were briefed on Mexican regulations concerning sardines. The only regulation on fishing sardines in Mexican waters is that their size comply with a 14.5 cm minimum length. We observed the sardine factory process in its entirety, from the purse seiners arriving back to the pier from the bay with a night.s catch, to the sardines being piped in from boat to conveyor belt to transport truck. The sardines. journey terminates either at the processing plant, where they are manually processed for human consumption, which is very labor intensive, or separated for burning in the reduction plant. Getting this close to the process, it became clear that the 14.5 centimeter size minimum was unenforced and, for all intents and purposes, unenforceable. All sardines caught in the nets were kept on the sardine boats for processing, and there was no intention or inclination to separate out the sardines that came in below the regulatory length, because there were no people present at any part of the process to enforce the size regulation.

Unenforced regulations have had a significant impact on the size of the sardine product for human consumption. Where sardine cans two or three years ago contained an average of 7-9 sardines per can, the number now averages 14-15 sardines per can. Based on anecdotal information obtained from sources close the sardine industry, the size of the sardines now being caught in Magdalena Bay has shrunk by half in the last three years.

The final leg of the sardine cannery tour was also the most intriguing, involving a visit to the Calmex reduction plant, the largest such plant in Mexico. The head, tail and guts of the sardine and as much as 70% of the sardine's body are reduced here to a powder-like substance called fishmeal. This fishmeal is sold to food factories, which in turn modify existing grain combinations with it to produce the cheapest.albeit low quality.source of protein available. This mixture is then put on market and sold to the chicken and pig industries at home in Mexico and abroad. This cheap source of protein has accounted for most of the accelerated growth of the now-giant poultry industry in Mexico and abroad, an industry which at one time existed mostly as a small, provincial industry, severely limited in growth by feed limitations.

Labor Intensive Processing for Human Consumption

The reduction plant accounts for the foul smell permeating the town of Puerto San Carlos each afternoon, as the reduction plant would start the burning process. The reduction plant only manufactures 100-150 tons of fishmeal per day, although it is capable of churning out at least 1000 tons per day. The Moon Industries plant, owned by the notorious Reverend Moon, is also getting in on the reduction process, with plans to build a 60 ton reduction facility in the near future, turning the wasteful but surprisingly lucrative reduction process into a full time stink for the town of Puerto San Carlos, and a more onerous burden on the already maximized sardine fishery here in Magdalena Bay.