When the Sea Runs Dry: One Fishing Community's Story
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When the Sea Runs Dry: One Fishing Community's Story
Every day in the afternoon, fishermen pilot brightly colored canoes called pirogues back from a day’s work on the ocean and haul their catches onto shore. For as long as they can remember, people who live in Joal-Fadiouth, Senegal, on the West African coast have depended on the bounty of the sea; fish is not only their main source of protein but also their primary commercial product. But on many days, fishermen from this town of 46,000 are coming back from the sea without a catch.
Once home to the world’s most abundant fish stocks, the waters of West Africa have fallen prey to overfishing by industrial trawlers, devastating places such as Joal-Fadiouth. In the last few decades, the percentage of overfished marine fisheries worldwide has tripled. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a third of all fished stocks are fished at unsustainable levels and another 60 percent have no capacity for increased fishing—largely because of the increased demand for fish and fish meal, a powdered protein used to feed other animals such as fish and livestock in European and Asian markets.
A fisherman balances his catch of the day as pirogues enter the port in Joal-Fadiouth, Senegal. Fishing has become more difficult for the local men, who receive a very small subsidy from the government to support their work. Many of their competitors from more well-heeled countries draw significantly larger sums: Fish industry workers in developing countries such as Senegal receive an estimated one-seventh of the amount of government subsidies that their counterparts in developed countries get.
Julia Hoppock and Lee Gillenwater / The Pew Charitable Trusts
Brightly colored handmade dugout canoes, known as pirogues, are docked on a Senegalese shore after spending the day at sea.
José Ignacio Pardo Escudero/Getty Images
Fishermen pull a net into their wooden pirogue. The boat’s captain, Malik Seye (far right), says the commercial fishers, who patrol the waters in much bigger boats equipped with huge nets, pose a real danger for the ocean. Seye says, “When they catch fish, it is like somebody sweeping their room and not paying attention to what is dirt and what is not.” A megatrawler can catch up to 22,000 tons of fish a year, or the annual capacity of about 1,700 pirogues combined.
Julia Hoppock and Lee Gillenwater / The Pew Charitable Trusts
Fishermen sip tea and repair their net just off the coast of Joal-Fadiouth, where they search for fish to sell and eat. Fishing is the only trade they know, but overfishing has dwindled the fish stocks and left little for the locals, who are forced to travel farther from shore. “People have relinquished fishing methods of the past,” says Malik Seye. “Our ancestors would not go far out to sea, and they would come back with fish.”
Julia Hoppock and Lee Gillenwater / The Pew Charitable Trusts
A worker at a fish processing plant in Joal-Fadiouth dries, salts, and smokes fish for transport. The decreased catch means that people like him make about a third of the wages they did in 2010. Women hold the majority of the jobs in the plants where fish is prepared for selling; some bring their children to work with them because they no longer can afford school fees.
Julia Hoppock and Lee Gillenwater / The Pew Charitable Trusts
A woman at the market picks up fish, which will go to a plant for processing, on trucks to other parts of Africa, or to locals for dinner. A bucket of fish this size is not nearly enough to feed fishing crew members and their families.
Julia Hoppock and Lee Gillenwater / The Pew Charitable Trusts
Marianne Teneng Ndaye stands among hundreds of freshly caught shad drying in the sun. She’s a third-generation fish processor and president of the Seafood Women Processors, a job she’s held since 2006. “Processing fish is our only source of earning a living,” she says. “The [industrial] boats destroy the sea because they take the big fish and the small fish with their nets and rotating chains.” She adds that the small fish need to stay in the ocean to grow and reproduce. “The sea belongs to all of us. It’s up to us to preserve it.”
Julia Hoppock and Lee Gillenwater / The Pew Charitable Trusts
Sundown mutes the vibrant colors of a painted pirogue. Malik Seye says leading a boat of fishermen is a big responsibility; if he comes back with no fish, he must borrow money to support his family. “Whenever I go fish, I wish I could bring something for the family,” he says. “I leave it in God’s hands.”
Julia Hoppock and Lee Gillenwater / The Pew Charitable Trusts
Governments around the world spend more than $35 billion to subsidize fishing. About $30 billion of this amount goes to large-scale industrial fishers, many in developed nations in Europe, China, and Russia, rather than to small-scale fishers in vulnerable coastal countries such as Senegal, according to Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. Subsidy payments that offset material costs—fuel, gear, and construction—also enable the bigger vessels to work longer and travel farther out to sea, which can lead to overfishing, stressing the fish populations beyond what is sustainable. Some industrial fishing methods indiscriminately sweep the ocean floor with massive nets that leave little for fishers who use traditional equipment.
“What is so problematic is using taxpayers’ money to overfish the stock, because this doesn’t help the community,” says Sumaila. “We’re losing about 10 million tons of fish a year because we’re not managing it well.” Fishers in developing countries get $1 in subsidies from taxpayers to every $7 that their counterparts in developed countries receive, he says.
Fishers in Joal-Fadiouth feel the effects. “There are a lot of people who used to make money fishing that don’t have a penny,” says Malik Seye, a fisherman and captain of a fishing boat. “I think about our children’s future a lot, because I think fishing will become harder and harder every day. I do not wish my children to become fishermen.”
Soon, however, global policymakers will have a rare opportunity to help repair the situation, which has threatened the way of life for Seye and his fellow fishers on the African coast. The Pew Charitable Trusts is working to encourage members of the World Trade Organization to adopt a binding agreement that will limit or eliminate harmful fisheries subsidies by the end of 2019—which is not only one of the single greatest actions that could ensure the health of the world’s oceans, but also would help sustain the only way of life that fishermen like Seye have ever known.
