Tag Archives: cockles
The Cockle Collectors
In the Esmeraldas region of northern Ecuador a large mangrove reserve has been created, within which several villages have custodianship of the forests. Here traditional ways of mangrove-dependent fishing continue, including picking cockles from the mud around the mangrove roots. Cockle collection is predominantly women’s work, and in the village of Tambillo I joined a group of these concheras as they set out for the mangrove collecting grounds. Here is the blog post I wrote about that experience . . . Read more »
Concheras at the cockle beds, about to climb the mangrove scaffold. Photo by Kennedy Warne.
About Kennedy Warne
Kennedy Warne co-founded New Zealand Geographic magazine in 1988, and served as the magazine’s editor until 2004, when he relinquished the editorship in order to pursue his own writing and photography. He has written for National Geographic, Smithsonian, Canadian Geographic, GEO and various travel publications, and continues to contribute regularly to New Zealand Geographic. He writes mostly about natural history subjects, and specializes in underwater assignments. His work for National Geographic has taken him from the sea ice of the Gulf of St Lawrence to the mangrove swamps of Bangladesh; from the rainforests of Fiordland to the kelp forests of Cape Town. His book Roads Less Travelled: Twenty Years of Exploration with New Zealand Geographic is published by Penguin (NZ) in September 2008. He lives in Auckland.
