00:00It's the cradle of nature, because there we find everything.
00:05It's the cradle of fish, shrimp, catfish, catfish, oyster, and many other things.
00:14To this day, the lagoon is the mother of fishermen.
00:17My grandmother used to say when I was a child,
00:19as long as there are fish and crustaceans in the lagoon, no one goes hungry.
00:23I thought, how can I give a social and environmental return to my community?
00:27Today I'm replanting mangroves.
00:29It's very gratifying to see them all moving around the convent for us.
00:33It's a way of thanking us for what we've done for them.
00:36Before, there were several places that didn't have mangroves.
00:39Everything was devastated.
00:41And now we are more than 14,000 mangroves planted in the town.
00:45It's very beautiful.
00:48My name is Mayrin de Nascimento.
00:50I'm the daughter of a fisherman.
00:53People call me Maya.
00:56When I can't pronounce my name, they say,
00:58I'm the girl of the mangrove.
01:00I'm currently the mayor and founder of our mangrove.
01:13I'm from Maceió, Alagoas.
01:14In the middle of the community, the sea meets the lagoon,
01:17and forms this wonderful meeting.
01:19It's a community that, for the most part,
01:21is made up of fishermen and landowners.
01:24There's also the beautiful sunset,
01:26the lagoon's shores,
01:28and next to it, that beautiful ecosystem,
01:30which is the mangrove.
01:32I was practically born in the lagoon.
01:34My parents came here to fish so we could have something to eat.
01:37And even today, this ecosystem kills the hunger of so many other people here in the lagoon.
01:42Most of these areas used to be deforested.
01:45And that would directly imply what we eat.
01:47Because if there's no mangrove, there's no fish, there's no sururu,
01:50there's no shrimp, there's no other species.
01:52So I thought, how can I recover this ecosystem?
01:56And then we started to really do some plantings,
02:00and really have this notion that we could become a business
02:03and make money with it.
02:06At first, people didn't understand, right?
02:08Why would we do this? Out of love?
02:11Out of love? To take care of nature?
02:13And people would say, oh, it's crazy.
02:15You spend all day in the woods recovering mangroves.
02:19But over time, we started to gain regional and national recognition.
02:24And then people started to demystify this vision.
02:32We create a slogan, right?
02:33The mangrove is yours, the mangrove is mine, the mangrove is ours.
02:36Precisely because we have this perspective
02:38that everyone should take care of this ecosystem.
02:42The mangrove is a species that is in a transition area.
02:45It's in an ecosystem transition between the sea and the lagoon.
02:49Lagoon, because the water has a salinity theorem.
02:52Because of this meeting of the tides, right?
02:54From fresh water to salty water, so the water is salty.
02:57And the mangroves exist precisely in these areas of transition.
03:01We take the mangroves, we take some of the vineyards over there.
03:0390 days is like a meter, more or less.
03:06The importance of the mangrove for fishermen
03:08If there were no mangroves, there would be no fish, there would be no crab.
03:11It's there that the name of the fight is told, right?
03:13Always in the fight, always fighting, and let's go ahead.
03:16I've been fishing since I was 15 years old.
03:19I'm going to be 70 soon.
03:21The mangrove and the fish are together.
03:22And he takes the shadow more, right?
03:24Hiding, dating.
03:25And he already has his lunch, right?
03:27The mangrove before, for us, was not like it is today.
03:30Because at that time we cut the mangroves a lot, right?
03:34And the fish could not be produced.
03:36Never reserve today.
03:38No one is messing with him anymore.
03:40And even today it's a beauty.
03:46This is where we produce the species of mangroves.
03:48We produce three types of species.
03:51This one is the red mangrove.
03:52This one is the black mangrove, okay?
03:55This little one you see here is the white mangrove.
03:59And here we bring the students from school too
04:02to see this experience of producing the mangroves.
04:05And our boat has that step up front
04:09that it aims to collect this garbage
04:13that is floating in our lagoons.
04:16And then we also work inside the mangroves.
04:19It's a very shrubbery place, right?
04:22And it serves as a kind of filter.
04:25As you can see, a lot of the waste gets stuck in those roots
04:29and stays there for years and years.
04:31And there are several species of mangroves.
04:34Both mangroves and fish.
04:38That's why our lagoon is an important estuary
04:42and a natural mangrove of many, many species.
04:45That is, many species come here to reproduce.
04:49And this garbage from the current in this environment
04:54it greatly damages this scenario.
05:02In some countries, they are starting to recover the mangrove areas
05:06to fight tsunamis and floods.
05:08The mangrove manages to kidnap 10% more greenhouse gas.
05:12But the mangrove also has the ability to kidnap heavy metals,
05:15control the salinity of the water.
05:17And before they called us crazy,
05:19today they start to applaud our work and want to be part of it.
05:22I see Pontal da Barra, 10 years from now,
05:24as one of the biggest reference neighborhoods
05:27in terms of preservation and conservation of mangrove areas.
05:30I can also encourage other young people to change their realities
05:33from what they have available in their community.
05:36Because I believe that everyone has a purpose in life.
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