2 weeks Ago
The Post and Courier is partnering with the Pulitzer Center's Ocean Reporting Network to highlight critical climate issues. Lire en français Ibrahim Niang could leave Senegal. He knows how to prepare his long wooden boat for the 1,000-mile voyage to the Canary Islands.
He’s 34 years old, young enough to make a big move, as so many of his friends have done. He has the skills and equipment to take himself far away — take others too, if he chooses. And there are many reasons to go.
The ocean? It’s not the same. The seas are warmer. He has to take his boat farther offshore to find octopus and sardines.
And there are those giant commercial fishing boats off the coast, huge floating fish factories that scour the ocean’s marine life on an industrial scale. And aren’t there more opportunities in Europe? North America? Some of his friends have even called him a coward for staying. Niang’s story mirrors ones playing out in different variations around the globe, from struggling shrimpers in South Carolina and New England to cod fishermen in the United Kingdom .
Catching fish is inherently unpredictable, but global warming is adding even more uncertainty to an already challenging livelihood. So on a recent afternoon, as Niang took his small pirogue out to sea, he pondered a question that thousands of West Africans have asked themselves during the past decade: Should I go? Ibrahim Niang, a fisherman from Thiaroye Sur Mer, a village near the Senegalese capital of Dakar, has the means, skills and boats to leave Senegal. There are many reasons to stay.
Niang lives in Thiaroye Sur Mer, a fishing village on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal’s capital. His family is in Thiaroye Sur Mer, including his wife and two children. And fishing has been his life, his identity.
As with many of his peers, he dropped out of primary school to learn how to fish. Over time, he built and captained his own pirogues — the long banana-shaped boats used by fishermen in West Africa. He was part of something larger.
Here off the coast, powerful ocean currents meet and provide a bounty of marine life: sardines, octopus, grouper. An estimated fleet of 19,000 pirogues and other small vessels line Senegal’s coast. At least 86,000 fishermen catch more than 500,000 tons of seafood a year, according to a United Nations estimate.
Fish and seafood represent more than 40 percent of the animal protein in the Senegalese diet. Niang was helping to feed his family and the nation. Niang’s day often begins around sunrise, when he motors out to sea.
He said he uses lines to hook octopuses one by one, the legal way. Some fishermen use nets, which is illegal, but he doesn’t want to be arrested and lose his fishing gear. Playing by the rules is good for the fish and fishermen, he said.
Along Senegal’s coast, communities of fishermen formed associations to manage fishing harvests, including Thiaroye Sur Mer’s Local Artisanal Fishing Council. These councils enacted seasonal fishing bans to allow certain species to reproduce. But no fish means no money and food.
So when the sea is off-limits for fishing, some boat captains make money by loading people into their pirogues and taking them to the Canary Islands to start new lives. Niang knows how dangerous the sea can be, another reason to stay. He knows people who have died making these illegal voyages.
He knows some trips ended in disasters that generated international headlines. Like one in September, where the Senegal navy found a boat adrift with 30 decomposing bodies off Dakar. And the one in August, where a boat with at least 14 bodies was found drifting off the coast of the Dominican Republic, thousands of miles from home.
In just the first five months of 2024, at least 4,800 people died trying to reach the Canary Islands from West Africa, according to a report by Ca-Minando Fronteras , a Spanish human rights group. Niang understands the risks. But there are also powerful forces pushing him to leave.
Senegal's Langue de Barbarie area has seen major erosion amid rising seas, threatening fishing villages that have existed there for generations. How heat in seas off West Africa is making the Atlantic’s hurricane season a nightmare The sea is changing. Off the coast of Senegal and Mauritania, winds blowing off the continent push surface waters westward, drawing colder, nutrient-rich waters from the ocean floor.
It’s called the Canary upwelling current, and fishermen like Niang depend on this system to fertilize the sea just as farmers fertilize their fields. But a rapidly warming planet has disrupted wind patterns and ocean currents. As the atmosphere warms, those westward winds blowing off West Africa are likely to decrease, possibly slowing that Canary upwelling conveyor belt, researchers at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar and the Sorbonne in France have found.
Seas off West Africa have grown warmer, mirroring increases across the planet. During the past two years, scientists have recorded underwater heat waves off West Africa , which can affect everything from sea life to the formation of Atlantic hurricanes. Warmer waters have caused some species to migrate, said Selle Mbengue, director of direction and management of seabed exploitation in Senegal.
Fish that need cooler water are moving north, including sardines and mackerel, he said. Coral reefs are bleaching. At the same time, industrial fishing from foreign trawlers has depleted fish stocks, while coastal erosion from rising seas has stolen land from fishing villages that line Senegal’s coast, said Ngoné Ndoye, a founder and director of FEMIDEC — Women, Children, Migration and Community Development.
These forces are “washing away our homes, our history, our world. They’re erasing our lives,” she said. Niang feels all of these pressures.
And there’s money to be made if he goes. Fishermen in Senegalese villages like Yoff are under pressure from overfishing and changing migration patterns of sea life because of climate change. He knows how it could be done.
Like many fishermen, Niang has small boats for short trips and access to larger boats for longer voyages, including the one he motored toward on a recent afternoon. The larger boat was like the smaller pirogue but about 120 feet long. He uses long wires with hooks to catch larger fish.
Such boats cost about $15,000 to build with new materials and ones recycled from older boats. He said he’s received plenty of offers to captain such a boat to the Canary Islands. All he would have to do is remove the fishing nets and other gear and use plywood to create seats.
Captains typically get 10 seats they can use as they wish — selling them or offering them to loved ones. He estimated that this boat could hold 200 people, including luggage, gasoline containers and motors. There would be little room with so many people, and they’re dangerous to load.
Passengers typically are shuttled to these larger boats in smaller pirogues, and people sometimes fall into the water when they try to climb in. And with so many people, the boats can be unstable in the waves. It’s well-known in his circles that many people who make these voyages don’t know how to swim.
Even if the boat hugs the coast, a capsize is often a death sentence. He could make extra money taking people away, and this is especially tempting during the seasonal fishing bans. There’s no shortage of people willing to risk their lives to leave.
So far in 2024, nearly 40,000 migrants landed in the Canary Islands, Spanish authorities said. This represents a 23 percent increase from 2023 and is likely a vast undercount. "My friends are just waiting for the opportunity to cross to Spain,” he said.
Ibrahim Niang, a Senegal fisherman with a big decision to make. Are there other options? Yes, he said, he could stay and work at a seafood processor or some other company on land. Sometimes, officials from companies come to his village seeking workers.
The pay is steady but is so low you have little left to save. “With fishing, you can earn 100,000 CFA ($160) in one day and nothing the next day, but during the week, you can save at least 30,000 CFA ($50) on average. This is why we prefer fishing to working in a company.
” He also could leave Senegal but do it the legal way: Line up work in Europe first, apply for a visa and then go. He has a family, after all. It’s not cowardly to think about their needs and reduce risks.
"Nothing is worth the risk of losing your life for an uncertain future abroad. It is useless." Leaving Senegal is one of many currents he can follow.
But there’s also dignity in fishing, dignity in working for yourself instead of someone else. There’s the beauty and challenges of the ocean, like those full moon nights when the sea looks like a mirror, and the shimmering serves as camouflage for the fish. “No,” he said finally, “my boat is not going to Spain.
” Hundreds of fishing pirogues crowd the Senegal River on April 28, 2023, in Saint-Louis. Tony Bartelme of The Post and Courier contributed to this report. Will hurricanes hammer the East Coast? We traveled to the Sahara Desert to find answers.
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