seacorp

our ride up, nine in the car no problem

seacorp camp

windaid's first boat mounted turbine

We started our trip last Monday night, piling nine deep into our trusty/not so trusty land rover for the seven hour drive north. We were headed to the desert region of Sechuria, close to Piura, Peru.

We had two wind turbines with us, in addition to our luggage, tools, tents and sleeping bags. Unsurprisngly, the car overheated within the first two hours of our trip! The ´beast´as she is affectionately known takes a serious beating driving fully loaded through the Peruvian desert (I don´t think it helps that Nick, WindAid volunteer director and our loco driver thinks all roads in Peru should be driving like a rally), and overheating turned out to be a pretty regular occurance throughout our trip. 

We finally reached our first site, SEACORP about 4am where we slept under the stars on the front porch. SEACORP is a sustainable scallop farm, that employs 34 people on a full time basis. They were the first commerical buyers of WindAid´s large wind turbines and have two installed which fully powers their seaside camp. Additionally, they have the first boat mounted turbine which gives power to two guys who sleep 20 days on, 7 days off to patrol the waters and prevent others from stealing their scallops.

More after the jump!

james and gean, (peruvians are so tiny!) in the seacorp office

the electronics

these guys had previously managed to blow up a battery

scallop diver

eric, cracking open a scallop to taste

fresh scallop

this guy does 20 days on, 7 days off the patrol boat

After not much sleep, we woke up and got to work fixing their large turbine. Thankfully for us, it was a super quick fix, requiring only the replacement of the rectifier (for all you non electrically informed people out there, a rectifier converts the alternating current of electricity the turbines creates into the direct current needed to charge the batteries).

For someone with zero electrical experience, it still freaks me out a bit to see a large amount of car batteries (these guys have eight) wired up in what looks to be a completely ramshackle way powering an entire community of people living in the middle of nowhere. The stories we heard about exploading batteries, glowing batteries, short circuts that had melted copper together...it is just incredibly eye opening to see how creative people can be when trying to access electricity - something most of us completely take for granted.

Since we had fixed their turbine so quickly, we were lucky enough to spend the rest of the day out on the water touring the scallop farm. Scallop farms are AMAZING! SEACORP have grown over the past six years from a start up company into an international exporter, selling more than 220 tonnes of scallops annually.

Little known fact, it takes a year and a half for one scallop to reach maturity. Can you imagine! I had no idea such a labour of love goes into this delicious sea food. SEACORP has invested heavily in nursery technology which allows them to generate about 10million scallop eggs at a time. The eggs grow for six months before baby scallops, about 2cm in diameter are planted into the sea floor. They grow there for a year before being harvested by crazy Peruvians who dive with nothing more than a pipe and air compressor and pick each one by hand. Once harvested, they are sent to a processing factory where they are shelled and frozen on site.

We spent our day going from harvesting boat to harvesting boat, checking the size of the scallops and even managed to taste a few. Honestly, tasting fresh from the water, shelled in less than a minute and straight into our mouths scallops was one of the most delicious experiences I have had!

We finished our first day exhausted but completely happy. We left SEACORP to drive about 30min up the coast to Playa Blanco for the second part of our trip.