Dulce

On Colombia’s Pacific Coast, a mother teaches her daughter how to swim. It is an essential skill in this remote region, where livelihoods are made on the sea and where rising tides, made worse by climate change, have swept entire villages away in recent years. The girl, named Dulce, learns to overcome her fears and join the community of women who harvest the mangrove cockle, or piangua, for a living. It is a coming-of-age process that helps her understand both her cultural and natural surroundings, from the mud of the mangrove swamps to the powerful tides.

Afro-Colombian residents of the Iscuandé River delta have depended for generations on fishing and mollusk harvesting, specifically the mangrove cockle, or piangua. Overharvesting, however, has led to a drastic decline in piangua populations. As communities here work to preserve their coastal lands from pollution, development, and extreme ocean erosion, the essential role of the mangrove ecosystem--as the anchor of a sustainable harvesting economy, and as a protection against sea-level rise--has come into focus.