As a child, I used to dive with my eyes open in the sea to get the sensation of salt in my eyes. I tooked myself in an uncomfortable place, where one cannot see clearly, a reconnection of mine between tears and the sea: I thought that the sea water, being salty, could be the cry of the Earth.
The fact that this substance was so important for ancient peoples in their religious rituals or even in the recent past, where salting was the only way to preserve foods like meat always intrigued me.
Researching on the economic growth of Brazil between the years 2008 and 2012, I got in touch with some infrastructure works that were part of the Growth Acceleration Plan, the PAC. The expansion of the Areia Branca Saline Terminal, located 14 kilometers off the coast of Rio Grande do Norte, was part of the developmental project.
In the search for more information about the coast of Rio Grande do Sul and about the expansion cycles of the local economy, I came across the existence of large groups of sea salt extractors: they were large areas flooded by the creation of channels and the pumping of sea water for evaporation, leaving salt as a residue and a strong impact on the ecosystem. I needed to photograph that region somehow. But how to give the dimension of the great salt pans and tell about the tradition and technical knowledge of artisanal salt production? Aerial photos were the best way.
It was mid-May, in a period of little cloudiness in the region, always dry and with a constant breeze, when I managed to contact a pilot and an aircraft available in Mossoró, 42 kilometers from the Areia Branca and Grossos saltpans, places I had planned to photograph. We raised an overflight very early and, as soon as we started to gain altitude, I came across a beautiful and apocalyptic image: the low and flat relief allows the sea waters to advance up to 35 kilometers from the coast into the continent, forming immense flooded areas, in geometric cutouts of varied colors and tones, alternated by the amount of the tides
The aerial view of spaces is something that allows contextualizing the understanding of an ecosystem, from its presence and strength, to the impacts generated by climate change or human action. In contrast, the cut-out graphics allow to deconstruct the documentary vision, creating new scenarios and possibilities for viewing certain territories. Thus, the enchantment with the view was inevitable: the small cuts that seem to be built randomly in the landscape mix to the point of creating their own textures, in a point of view that the horizontal view does not allow. They are tanks in the shape of giant pools that from the top fit into a non-linear puzzle like cubist landscapes. But these are real.
The immense areas of industrial extraction today are mixed with small tanks of artisanal production. The impact that the activity causes on the mangroves of the region is clear: many of the salt pans, when expanding their tanks, end up interrupting the flow in the gamboas and rivers, changing the water course in the mangroves, which generates strong environmental problems, such as the increase of fauna mortality.
In 2013, the former Ibama (now ICMBio) launched a joint action with the Federal Police that resulted in 112 fines that exceeded R $ 80 million in the region. Inspecting permanent protection areas (APP’s) of mangroves and watercourses in 7 municipalities in the region, the operation called Ouro Branco embargoed 19 areas and generated 45 notifications for the presentation of environmental release documents. The total area covered by the inspection was over 40 thousand hectares, of which 2.5 thousand had high stages of degradation.
The disordered growth of the tanks also generates social conflicts when it prevents the movement of fishermen and shellfish gatherers in the region, traditional populations that obtain their livelihood in the same areas where the tanks advance. Many of the fishermen see themselves as having no other alternative to generate income and go to work manually in the extraction of salt, mainly during the closed fishing periods. Through manual techniques, they operate for small producers who resell the salt at low cost to companies in the region, which use mechanized techniques.
