Your hands off our fish

Fishermen in Senegal have been at loggerheads with the government over the ‘illegal’ presence of foreign fishing trawlers in the Senegalese waters. In April, thousands of the angry fishermen from fishing villages and towns across the country turned their backs on the sea in a ‘no fishing day’ protest against the foreign boats. It was one of the series of actions they plan to challenge the government’s decision to allow at least 20 foreign fishing trawlers to fish in Senegal where fishing is one of the main sources of income.

By Sheriff Bojang Jnr.

Kayar, 52km northwest of Dakar, is Senegal’s third largest fishing center. Like other fishing centers, fishing is the sole source of income in this village. For most of the thousands of fishermen, fishing is a family affair. They inherited it from the parents at a very tender age.

Daouda, 49 is one of the most industrious fishermen in Kayar. He is from the Lebou ethnic group which is mostly associated with fishing in Senegal.

A few years ago, his two cellular phones would ring almost every 15 minutes as clients, mainly middle class Senegalese from Dakar and other cities and tourists from hotels in nearby villages ordered their fish supplies.
While Daouda read the clients’ orders from his shabby notebook, his 18-year-old son, Mass would pile up the orders in nicely-arranged metal containers.

With a broad smile, Daouda said, ‘in those days I received orders from everywhere, everybody. Sometimes people called me and I had no idea how they got my number. I never asked either. I knew I was dealing with rich people, big government people because they always sent their drivers with their expensive vehicles to pick their orders’.

Daouda’s booming business suffered a major blow when his supplies could no longer march his clients’ demands. Week after week, he saw his luck dwindling, his net catching less and less fish.
As the situation worsened, he stopped taking calls from his clients in order to avoid disappointing them or lying to them. Sadly, they stopped calling.

‘I was no longer their trusted fisherman because I could not provide any fish anymore. They all gone… all of them’, Daouda laments.

Today, he rents out his only pirogue to other fishermen with hardly any regular income. To cater for his family’s daily needs, he sells locally-made café touba at the beach, earning less than a dollar each day.

Foreign invasion
Daouda blamed the change of his fortunes on foreign competitors in the sea.

The government issued licenses to at least 20 fishing trawlers from countries including Russia, Ukraine and Belize. The deal is expected to bring lot of money to government’s coffers.

The maritime ministry defended the decision and said the foreign boats have been authorized ‘to fish for migratory species which local fishermen lack the equipment to catch’.

But the local fishermen say the commercial foreign boats are keeping them out of business, and blame them for depleting fish stock.

While foreign trawlers are equipped with sonar radars that can trace fish from any location in the sea, local fishermen use locally-made pirogues and hand-held nets which goes with luck and superstition to make any catch.

How Africa feeds Europe
In a documentary ‘Cry Sea’, prominent Senegalese ecologist Ali El Haidar said, ‘it’s believed that 50% of Senegal’s fish is now caught by industrial trawlers and shipped straight to Europe. The remaining 50% has to provide a living for 600,000 people’.

Under an EU-Senegal agreement, European commercial fishing trawlers are allowed to fish in Senegalese waters.

In a recent report titled ‘How Africa Feeds Europe’, oceans campaign group, Greenpeace says the EU and other nations have systematically overfished their own waters, and are now expanding their reach in West Africa, fishing with some of the world’s largest and most powerful fishing vessels with capacity to process hundreds of tons of fish per day.

In Senegal, where living cost gets higher and higher, and prices of basic goods skyrocket, fishing is what brings food on the tables of hundreds of thousands of households. Fishermen sell their fish and whatever remains unsold goes back to the family for meals.

Fishing is also a tradition for the people, most of who turned their backs on farming many years ago due to poor harvests, unreliable rainfall pattern and lack of attractive markets to sell their harvests.

In April when the fishermen took to the streets of Dakar to protest against ‘foreign invasion in the Senegalese waters’, anti-riot police used batons and teargas to keep them of the streets.

A similar protest was quelled in the artisanal fishing village of Joal Fadiouth in Mbour, 59km off Dakar.
Greenpeace Africa oceans campaigner, Oumy Sene wrote ‘it’s time for African governments to manage our oceans for the benefit of our communities, and not narrow (foreign) fishing industry interests.’

In an anti-overfishing film, ‘The End of Line’, ecologist Haidar says of foreign trawler operators ‘When I see what this guy does, I want to fight him. I want to fight with his boat. I want to fight with the government that takes his money.’

Associate Professor Rashid Sumaila of University of British Columbia said ‘if the fish goes, the people are left poorer and what happens? They try to emigrate. The Europeans like our fish but they don’t like the people. The fish has visa to come in but the people are turned back’, in reference to Africans who migrate to Europe.
Some experts suggest that in 10 years, there will be no more fish left in Senegal’s waters.

Ten years is long way ahead but Senegal’s fishermen are already feeling the heat. With hardly any fish to catch, foreign vessels invading their waters and their government so far not willing to hear their cries, they have no choice but to wait and hope for divine intervention.

And for Daouda, his family will have to deal with one meal a day, from the three meals just a few years ago.

‘It’s a difficult situation but we believe that it’s Allah who gives and takes. And I hope He salvage us from these people who pushed us out of business and out of life. We will wait for the future’, he said in low tone.