In Senegal, fishermen are noticing the disappearance of sardinella, which is the most consumed fish in the country. A study published in June in the British journal Scientific Reports studied the distribution of small fish in the ocean in North and West Africa. It highlights the tropicalization of ecosystems. The sardinella moves from the Mauritanian and Senegalese coasts to Morocco, where significant catches have been recorded. Report from the small artisanal fishing port of Ouakam, in the heart of the capital.
On each side of the colorful canoe, 4 fishermen pull the boat out of the water and onto the sand. But that day, Amadou Gueye, the captain with a bad-day face. In his bucket, there are only 5 octopuses. “It’s not good, there’s a current and no fish!” » Is it difficult to find fish? “Yes, it’s complicated because there are boats, big boats. And as a result, we have no place to fish. »
These boats are the industrial fishing trawlers, accused by artisanal fishermen of practicing overfishing and of being responsible for the scarcity of the resource, and in particular of the sardinella. “Having sardinellas is now a big problem! », Confirms Ibrahima Ndiaye, vice-president of the local fishermen’s committee of Ouakam. “We now do 7 days at sea, but in the past, there was fishing of the day: we go out in the morning, we return in the evening. Now, these canoes spend a week at sea. They go to Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea-Conakry.”
But to the question if the warming of the water is responsible for the disappearance of small pelagics like the sardinella the answer is categorical. “No, every fish has its own water eh. As a former fisherman, I don’t agree with that, there is too much letting go in Senegal. »
The cause, according to him, is the absence of effective controls to prevent large trawlers from using sardinella as bait for tuna fishing, but also artisanal fishermen and their drift nets which catch fish that are too young and hinder their reproduction.
The new administration published on May 7 the list of vessels authorized to fish in Senegalese waters, the first attempt to better regulate the sector. The only certainty is that you have to go as far as Yoff from now on, in the suburbs of Dakar, to hope to find sardinellas.
The sardinella is moving north with the “tropicalization of ecosystems”
Scientists have noticed for years, in several places on the planet, a phenomenon of movement of sardinella from the South to the North. A new study spanning ten years, between 2005 and 2015, and which was published in June in the British journal Scientific Reports, studied the distribution of small fish in the ocean in North and West Africa. , studying the part of the Ocean stretching from Morocco to Guinea. This study highlights what is called “tropicalization of ecosystems”.
The sardinella moves from the coasts of Mauritania and Senegal to Morocco, where significant catches of sardinella have been recorded. Changes in the ecosystem due primarily to global warming are behind this migration. For Vincent Rossi, oceanographer at CNRS, the reasons for travel are complex.
