Gordon H. Sato - The Manzanar Project

The Manzanar Project

The project aimed at making salt water and desert combinations productive through application of the simplest, low cost rational scientific approaches had its first prototype in the Salton Sea in southern California. A simple food chain consisting of sewage and other waste on which salt- and heat-resistant algae would feed that then fed brine shrimp that then could be utilized in aquaculture as a food source for larger fishes was developed.

The idea was then expanded to larger scale manmade salt water tidal ponds in coastal deserts that could be utilized for aquaculture in controlled ponds and a tide-controlled food source for larger scale fish ranching that would come to the tidal wash on the coast to feed. Relatively formal conventional pilot projects supported through government programs in China, the Atacama Desert of Chile and the Sudan convinced Sato that the simple aquaculture concept was unlikely to reach those who need and could benefit from it most when administered through government agencies. Through contacts developed in the field that started as modest grassroots relief efforts for suffering remote villagers in Eritrea during the late stages of its war of independence with Ethiopia, Sato solidified and focused the approaches behind the current Manzanar Project that centers in the Eritrean desert on the Red Sea. The project focuses on building economic development by application of the simplest biological principles to develop an entire self-sufficient economy village by village.

The base of the support system centers on development of mangrove forests along the desert coastline. Mangrove trees grow in salt water, provide the base of an entire ecology for aquatic life, and provide lumber for fuel and construction and food for indigenous livestock as camels, goats and sheep. Coupled with Sato’s earlier developments in food chain generation for aquaculture, the mangrove forests provide both a land and sea based economy that once local needs for food and housing are met can be capitalized into a specialty seafood export market. Sato envisions that saltwater deserts when sufficiently populated with mangrove forests and other plants that can flourish in salt water could counteract global impact of deforestation in other areas of the world and bring desert areas into agricultural production.

Sato’s first working village prototype is Hargigo on whose nearby coastline construction of the forests provides jobs for both men and women, the latter of which was unheard of in the local area prior to the project. The population of Hargigo was essentially devastated at one time during the Eritrean War of Independence. Sato and the villagers planted a Mangrove Memorial Garden with the objective of one mangrove tree dedicated to every villager killed in the 1975 massacre. It is estimated that the Manzanar Project has planted nearly one million mangrove trees on the coast of Eritrea since the project began. In a February 2007 National Geographic article, Sato was referred to as a "maritime Johnny Appleseed."