In 2014, Chinese investors visited La Mosquitia, a remote region in eastern Honduras. Amazed by the abundant jellyfish, they eagerly installed a processing plant to export the product to China, where they are served as a delicacy.
Encouraged by the new investments, local communities adopted jellyfish fishing, which quickly became a critical source of income. The trade provided economic benefits in an area with few jobs, increasing local incomes and building community resilience, despite concerns that large-scale jellyfish fishing can disturb marine ecosystems by disrupting food chains.
Most local fishers saw it as a safer alternative to dangerous lobster fishing practices, which can cause decompression sickness, leaving many paralysed and disabled. “When the jellyfish industry arrived we had high hopes, as it was supposed to be a community project,” says José Luis Centeno, president of the Territorial Council of Rayaka, in La Mosquitia.
Ten years later, those hopes have been dashed after the jellyfish boom that prompted the investment was followed by years of low yields. Only two years – 2016 and 2021 – were considered successful.
“When we started in 2014, we had about 300 employees and the jellyfish business was booming. Now, the processing plant stands still for around nine months every year,” says Terencio Escobar, 55, a community leader. “If the jellyfish are exposed to too much rainfall, for example, they quickly turn pink and form fungi, which makes them inedible.”
The jellyfish’s vulnerability to changes in climate makes harvesting possible only during the predominantly sunny seasons, which last about three months in Honduras. Extreme weather events frequently reduce or interrupt these windows of opportunity. During rough and rainy conditions, the harvest cannot be processed even if fishers catch a decent amount.
The most recent example was in 2024, when tropical storm Sara flooded the northern coast with heavy rains, damaging the community’s infrastructure and shutting down the jellyfish industry for two months. Fishers – who are paid by each bucket turned into the processing plant – mainly carry the risks of these shifting fishing conditions.
The price for a bucket is often arbitrary and “for every 100 buckets, they [managers of the processing plant] deduct 5% of the pay for good measure,” a fisher says under condition of anonymity. For each bucket containing approximately 19kg of jellyfish, a fisher could receive between 14 and 22 lempiras (43p and 68p), depending on demand or the plant managers’ willingness to pay.
In perfect conditions, a fisher could catch about 100 buckets of jellyfish, equating to as much as 2,200 lempiras. However, on a bad day, this could be as little 20 buckets or none at all.
According to fishers’ representatives, yield-based payments carry a high financial risk. Most fishers must rent a boat and motor, hire help and buy gasoline, which is expensive in the region. With the boat rental alone costing 400 to 500 lempiras, a day’s fishing can cost about 900 lempiras, once other costs have been added. If prices are low, the fishers must catch 65 buckets a day just to break even.
The prices paid to Honduran producers contrast with those of a profitable sector worldwide. Considered a culinary delicacy in some countries, the retail value of salted and packaged jellyfish is about £35 a kilo. According to local sources, the production costs of those exported from La Mosquitia are no higher than £5 a kilo.
***
Since 2014, the drop in income and number of jobs caused by the fall in jellyfish production has made life increasingly hard for Indigenous communities, the majority of whom are Miskitos, in a region where the state has little presence and provides few resources.
The remoteness of the region has left communities defenceless against drug traffickers, who use the labyrinth of rivers and hard-to-travel sections of jungle to hide their operations. Violence, kidnappings and disappearances are common, with Indigenous people often caught in the crossfire during the government’s counter-operations. According to Centeno, local communities are not involved in drug trafficking, but the government’s armed forces claim many residents collaborate and benefit from the trade, due to the lack of other job opportunities.
Besides the violence, the region is also one of the most expensive in Honduras, due to its dependence on small shipments of goods that can take several days to reach La Mosquitia. Even essential products are often unaffordable for fishers and their families.
“Often, we would go out to fish and the weather would surprise us with rain or large waves in the afternoon,” says a fisher who didn’t want to be named. “Then you sit there with maybe five buckets and a huge debt you must pay off. It has happened to everyone here.”
In the male-dominated industry, the women who work in the processing plant separating the “head” from the rest of the jellyfish, also suffer from the unpredictable trade. Paid just five lempiras a bucket, they earn less than half the minimum wage in Honduras.
“Sometimes we would sit in the processing hall and wait for fishers to bring jellyfish, but they would not catch anything all day. Those days we are not paid at all,” says Sintia Monico Lopez, who works in the processing plant.
Centeno grieves the loss of an industry that had held such promise for La Mosquitia. “The jellyfish industry here has let us down,” he says. “The community is bearing the industry’s risks, not the benefits.”
