Too many boats for too few fish
The European Union’s greed for West Africa’s fish
BACK in 1968, five fishing boats operated off Hann Plage, near Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Three still used oars, two had motors. Now the sea is ploughed by over 1,000 motorised pirogues, the descendants of the old African fishing canoes. But whereas in 1968 it took half an hour to sail from the beach to the fish, today it takes over four hours, and the fishermen catch only a fraction of what they used to scoop from the ocean.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Too many boats for too few fish”
From the June 16th 2001 edition
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