Environment

Senegal’s fishing crisis

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People in the West African country of Senegal have made their living from the sea for generations. But overfishing has put the region’s fish stocks in crisis. And the Senegalese are struggling to find a solution. Jori Lewis has this report.

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. The global stocks of fish are declining. Scientists say that overfishing will destroy most populations of saltwater fish within 40 years – that’s if current trends continue. And so marine ecologists and fisheries managers are trying to make sure that current trends do not continue. This pattern of overfishing and then putting restrictions on fishing has played out all over the world. Reporter Jori Lewis has an example. She visited the West African nation of Senegal which has depended on the riches of the sea for decades.

JORI LEWIS: It always seems simple enough. Take your boat out into the water, drop a couple of hooks or a net or a bow, and wait. Et voila. Food for days. Food for a nation. And for many people a real living too.

[SOUND CLIP OF WATER AND DRUMS]

The beach in the Senegalese resort town of Nianing is full of drummers and dancers on this cool afternoon. Mansour Thiaow stands to the fray and gestures to the boats in front of him and the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

MANSOUR THIAOW: All is from the sea.

LEWIS: Everything Thiaow has he says is thanks to the fish – The fish that he and his brothers catch with their six small boats.

THIAOW: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: Before there wasn’t any electricity at our house. For us it was candles. Now there is electricity. There wasn’t water. Now there is a tap at the house. There is a telephone. There are plenty of little things.

LEWIS: The Thiaow brothers haul in squid for local hotels, mollusks for the Asian market, and any fish that swims for the local daily thieboudienne habit. Thieboudienne is Senegal’s national dish. A meal of fish, broken rice, and vegetables. And the Thiaows have lots of company. Fishing and related businesses employ more than 15% of Senegal’s workers. And fish products are the country’s primary export. That’s because in the 1970s Senegal saw the ocean as its road to economic development. It made sense. Senegal had fish. Europe wanted fish. It would be trade not aid. So the government subsidized the expansion of the industry and thousands of locals entered the trade – men whose fathers had been miners and bureaucrats. Farmers driven off their land by years of drought.

[SOUND CLIP OF PEOPLE TALKING IN BACKGROUND]

Children play on the beaches of the small city Foundiougne in Senegal’s Sine-Saloum Delta. The Delta’s estuary system is home to hundreds of fish species and some of the region’s biggest shrimp. It’s also home to Moustapha Diakhate, the president of the local shrimp fisherman’s association. Long ago he was seduced by the lure of the fishery.

MOUSTAPHA DIAKHATE: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: I came here, I look at the sea, and other people doing the fishing and I left with them. I tried for two days and I understood more and more. It will be 30 years now.

LEWIS: Diakhate says it was just that easy. Find a boat to share, buy a net, and go. Too easy perhaps.

DIAKHATE: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: There are a lot of fishermen and each person does what he wants. There are norms that you should respect. Norm of net size and capture. But there are people who don’t respect anything.

LEWIS: And it’s not just fishermen who are concerned.

ABOUBACAR SIDIBE: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: Today we are definitely in a situation where the available resources can’t satisfy everyone.

LEWIS: Aboubacar Sidibe is a marine biologist in Dakar and a scientific advisor to seven West African governments.

SIDIBE: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: Some ordinary person will say, “no but there are fish there.” And it’s true that you can find some beautiful fish but that doesn’t mean that the stocks are doing well. On the contrary I know what I’m talking about because I’ve done the evaluation. I know that the numbers shows the abundance of fish is declining.

LEWIS: After years of encouraging fishing Senegal’s government is finally taking some steps to curtail it. It suspended agreements with the European Union that allowed EU boats to fish in Senegal’s waters and it’s taking steps to regulate its own legions of small fishermen.

[SOUND CLIP OF WAVES AND CHILDREN PLAYING]

In Ngor village, just outside of Dakar, the waves of the Atlantic crash on a beach crowded with hotels, fine restaurants, fishing boats, and children playing soccer on the sand. The side of each boat is painted with its name in the red, yellow, and green Senegalese flag. Each of the boats is also being fitted with a computer chip containing its registrations records. Ultimately the government hopes to use the chips to track the country’s thousands of registered small fishing boats by GPS. Masserigne Mbow is a technician working on the project.

MASSERIGNE MBOW: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: If you want to manage the sea’s riches you have to know how many boats are in the sea fishing. We have to count them.

LEWIS: Of course the chip won’t help track Senegal’s illegal and unregistered fishing boats. Not to mention the industrial trawlers and foreign ships that work far off shore. But it’s a start. The government is also supporting the local councils to help small fisherman monitor themselves. In Nianing, where the brothers Thiaow fish, the local council has instituted a periodic ban on catching certain species. Mansour Thiaow says he hopes that the ban will give the fish a chance to reproduce.

THIAOW: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: Now when it reproduces there will be plenty of fish. The species are going to flourish.

LEWIS: But fishery officials, conservation organizations, and academics all say that the best thing for the fisher would be to get rid of some of Senegal’s fishermen – maybe most of them. And some outside groups are trying to help the country take this next step. Vaque Ndiaye works with the World Wildlife Fund an USAID program that supports sustainable fishing in the Sine Saloum Delta. He says they want to crack down on the guys who are only in it for a quick buck.

VAQUE NDIAYE: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: We’re thinking about how to establish access rights and how to do it so that professional fishermen can access the fishery because the traditional fishermen know the sea and will fight to preserve the resource.

LEWIS: But every former fishermen just swells Senegal’s soaring unemployment rate – it’s nearly 50%. And with so few jobs those out-of-work fishermen add to the problem of illegal migration to Europe. For years Senegalese migrants have been embarking on the long and dangerous ocean journey to Spain’s Canary Islands. Some of them make it but many others don’t and instead become victims of the waters they once plied. And in small coastal towns like Foundiougne, all sand and salt and people taking refuge from the unremitting sun, that leaves people like the shrimper Moustapha Diakhate without a lot of options.

DIAKHATE: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

TRANSLATOR: Here in Foundiougne imagine if you didn’t fish. Look at this city. Everyone’s sitting around drinking tea. There is nothing, nothing to do. There is just the sea. Imagine 30 years of work without stopping. And the sea’s tired. And us we are tired too.

LEWIS: For The World I’m Jori Lewis, Foundiougne, Senegal.

CLARK: You can see Jori’s photos from Senegal on our website, The World dot org. While you’re there check out this week’s science podcast. It’s all about animals. Crocodiles in Cambodia, jaguars in Panama, and harp seals in Canada. Just go to The World dot org slash science.

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