Peru's fertilizer with a fragile future.

• Author: Elton, Catherine

Once key to this nation's economy, the extraction of seabird guano faces new challenges and market opportunities

The men have been up working since before dawn. They have to get a lot done before the wind picks up. Even without the wind their eyelashes are already coated with a layer of fine dust. They work with plastic bags hanging on their heads and down their backs like capes, to keep the dust from their hair. Their progress is visible. A line divides the broad, flat expanse on the highest part of the island. One side of the flat has already been cleared. It is the color of sand. The other side of the island is bone colored, spotted with thousands of mini-craterlike formations.

Here hundreds of men are working on this overcast morning. The clinking of their metal and the whispers of their brooms sweeping across the surface of the island mingle with their conversation, laughter, and the relentless pounding of the sea on the rocky cliffs of this Pacific island. In the air there is a slight aroma of ammonia. In the distance a few Peruvian boobies hurl themselves in bullet-like nose dives into the sea. The men's work is going well; already hundreds of giant black sacks are loaded and full with the island's riches--seabird guano.

The extraction of guano from the islands off the coast of Peru is an age-old industry. Even in pre-Inca times, the inhabitants of what is now Peru knew the value of this powerful organic fertilizer. In the years of the early republic, it was the boom in the export of guano that fueled the young nation's fledgling economy. In the 1900s Peru became known for its guano once again, when the industry, armed with science and research, converted itself into an internationally recognized model for the sustainable management of a natural resource. Today guano continues to be extracted much as it has been for centuries. Yet one very important thing has changed in this industry.

"Before there were more birds--more guanay cormorants, more pelicans, more boobies--and there was a thicker cap of guano on the island," says Victor Ropon. A short man with thick hands that look like they belong to someone twice his size, Ropon has worked guano for thirty-three years, slowly making his way up to his current position, supervisor of the guano extraction. "Now there's no fish, no shell-fish, no snails. Now there is nothing, and the birds have left in search of food."

After a severe El Nino phenomenon in 1997 and 1998, and after decades of overfishing of anchovy, the guano bird populations are at the lowest point in history. And fewer birds means less guano. After hundreds of years of extraction and tradition, Peru's guano industry is struggling to survive.

There is no other place in the world where such a high-quality organic fertilizer is produced in such large quantities and under such perfect conditions. Peru's unparalleled success in guano production is owed to extraordinarily rich seas and a dry climate. Thanks to the Peruvian current, commonly known as the Humboldt Current, which sweeps cold Antarctic waters northward up nearly the entire coast, the water off the coast is surprisingly cold for Peru's latitude.

This cold temperature, which ensures a higher oxygen content, is combined with a high saline level, making water denser and allowing plankton to float to the surface. High quantities of plankton also make theft way to the water's surface thanks to the upwelling phenomenon present at various points along the coast. The topography of the coast, cross currents, and winds cause circular and vertical motions in the water, thrusting minerals and nutrients, which would otherwise settle to the ocean floor, to the surface. There the phytoplankton meets the intense tropical rays of the sun and photosynthesizes, creating a rich "plankton soup," as scientists call the waters off the Peruvian coast. This is the first link in a long, rich, and varied food chain.

These abundant seas convert the series of rocky, barren, dry islands--twenty-two in all--into a virtual paradise for bird life. Here vast flocks of birds have ample food and areas to nest far from the reach of...