La Campagne de Pêche

There’s been a flurry of activity in Cayar, as preparations are made to receive the upcoming downpour of migrating fishermen. Each year sees more and more fishermen coming to Cayar for the high fishing season (la Campagne de pêche), and each season sees more and more of these migrant workers dropping roots and staying. With people quitting the inland areas to find work in the fishing industry, the country’s coastal population has seen a huge increase over the past few decades. Cayar alone saw its population more than double over a twenty-year period (1988-2008), from 7,307 to 18,340 permanent residents.

Evidence of this can be seen in the major infrastructure development currently underway in every corner of the village. Everywhere you look you can see houses springing up, brick by brick, while efforts are underway to expand classrooms, build new schools, and construct a new mosque, all to support the expanding population. We’re also seeing a major revamping of Cayar’s only asphalt road. Originally a two-lane route, it is now being doubled to four-lanes to accommodate the increased traffic from large ice trucks, which are used to transport fish catches primarily to Dakar and Thiès for domestic and international distribution.

While this seasonal population boom is a boon to the local economy, the downside is that it generally results in much higher occurrences of conflict, which have turned quite violent in the past. In an effort to identify and prevent these outbreaks, the CLPA (Conseil Local de Pêche Artisanale), with aid from the WWF, COMFISH, and COGEPAS, organized a two-day conference that included various professional associations, such as those for different fishing methods, women, and migrant fishermen. This saw a good turnout, with representatives also coming from other fishing communities, such as Joal-Fadiouth and St. Louis, to offer their perspectives and ideas in the prevention and management of conflict.

Les engins de pêche (fishing methods)

Cayar’s large population increase over the last few decades has put a lot of pressure on its fishery, not only because there are more people fishing, but also because the methods used have become far more efficient at extracting resources. While line fishing is the method traditionally practiced by Cayarois (and still practiced by the vast majority), the senne tournante (purse seine), filets dormants (dormant nets) and palangre (long-line) have come into major use in recent decades, and is the method of choice for most migrating géej Ndariens (St. Louisiens of the sea).

The filets dormants are probably the most controversial methods of fishing in Cayar. Violent clashes once broke out over their use, but agreements in recent years between the various fishing unions have helped to disarm the conflict.The filets dormants are nets that are left to float for a certain period of time before being collected again. All too often, these nets get caught up in other fishermen’s lines and in their motors. They also pose a danger to underwater spear fishermen, who risk getting tangled in these difficult-to-see contraptions.

Of particular concern are nets that are anchored on, or close to, rock formations. Such nets have a tendency to get tangled among the rocks and become irretrievable. When this is the case, fish continue to get trapped long after the net has been abandoned. To combat this, the local association representing fishermen who employ the filet dormant requires that no nets can be placed close to shore, or close to rock formations, and that all nets must be well marked with flags and buoys.

However, some fishermen continue to pose their nets in restricted areas, and to prevent discovery they remove all identifying structures. To re-locate their nets, they drag an anchor around the approximate area and wait until it catches on the net. Not only do these “invisible” nets pose a danger to other fishermen, but also they are often not recovered, meaning they stay out at sea and continue to trap fish for an indefinite period of time.

The senne tournantes routinely haul in catches upward of 30 metric tons, which some argue should discount them from being qualified as artisanal (see these two papers by UNEP and FAO for a good discussion on the definition of artisanal fisheries).They generally operate in twos, with each boat pulling the net around and then tightening the bottom to trap the fish within. Often, one of the boats is so large that it can’t come ashore, and instead stays out at sea while the smaller one makes several runs to bring fish to the beach. The pictures below are of one of these smaller pirogues, which at this point was making its 5^th trip to shore that day!

Overfishing from these behemoths has been somewhat reduced by a few agreements with the association of senne tournantes. Of significance is the agreement that no vessel employing the senne tournante can be used two days in a row. This means that on any given day, we generally see no more than half the fleet out at sea. However, they still represent a very significant portion of the catch. (Here’s a video of a small senne tournante being pulled in by a lone crew).

Safety and Security

A major talking point during the conference was that of safety and security at sea. The issues include boats running out of fuel and being stranded far out at sea, boats running afoul of others’ fishing lines and in some cases, especially at night, of collisions between boats. Some suggestions were made to impose minimum equipment requirements – such as first-aid kits, flashlights, and klaxons – on board to ensure the safety of the fishermen. There is already a requirement for all members on board to wear life vests, many of which were provided by the WWF, but not everyone does.

Now that the Campagne is fully underway, we’ve begun to see a lot more traffic coming in everyday, and as you can see below, the quais de pêche are filled to bursting!

Raising Awareness for Cayar’s Marine Protected Area

An important contributing factor to the long-term success of any protected area is strong support from the local population. When this is the case, not only should we see fewer infractions in the area, but as local stakeholders take an interest in protecting their resources, the burden of surveillance will ideally be lightened for the management staff. Fewer infractions, of course, mean less destructive fishing methods and better protection for the area’s habitats and species, while a lighter surveillance load frees up time and money for the management team to concentrate on improving other aspects of the MPA.

In order to gain this support, Cayar’s MPA management committee, with the WWF, has implemented several strategies to raise awareness and engage locals to take an active role towards ensuring the MPA’s success.

One of the strategies has been to put up large, informative signposts in strategic parts of the village, detailing the MPA’s historical background and providing some technical information, such as zoning and basic regulations. At the moment, these signs are in French only, but future signs are being planned to potentially reach a wider audience by being printed in Wolof and Arabic (many people here learn to read and write in Arabic through Koranic schools).

Radio has long been believed to be a powerful method of reaching out to Cayar’s population. Several years ago, the WWF began construction for a radio station that was to eventually become financed, managed, and programmed by the local community. While the building itself has been completed (it’s where I’m living at the moment!), and a radio frequency has just recently been licensed (89.1 FM), the funds for the actual radio equipment have been sparse. Efforts to gain community financing met with many difficulties, and its status has been in limbo for some time now. There has recently been some news of a new donor, so we hope to soon see it functional.

In the meantime, however, the MPA management committee and the WWF have contracted with an independent radio station, SUD FM, to attend presentations and conduct interviews in Cayar, which will then be released as a series of broadcasts detailing the role of the MPA in conserving the area’s resources.

While it is important to raise awareness of the issue, it is also very important that the community has a means of voicing their concerns and providing their own input. To that end, the MPA management committee organized several open discussion meetings in various village districts.

These turned out to be very animated, with a lot of energy coming from all sides! The main concerns voiced in these meetings had to do with the belief that the MPA would constitute a complete fishing ban. Pictured above and at left, you can see members of the MPA management committee explaining the intended role of the MPA. They made sure to emphasize that only two small reproductive zones would be closed to fishing, and explained the theory of “spillover.”

After these explanations, the response was generally quite positive, and one group of fishermen even went so far as to identify other reproductive zones that they would also like to see protected!

These are only a few of the initiatives in place and planned for Cayar’s MPA, and there is still much work to be done in the department of awareness-raising. Many people know of the MPA, but at the moment it is still just a theoretical space on the sea, not really affecting anything. As it becomes marked with buoys over the next few months, people will see that it is something that tangibly exists. Hopefully, they will see it as a tool that they can use to protect their own livelihoods, and those of future generations.

GPS Outing for Buoys

A week ago I joined an excursion out to sea to take GPS coordinates for the Marine Protected Area’s inner boundaries, which are to be given extra protections. The crew was made up of two gendarmes from the MPA surveillance team, representatives from the MPA’s management committee, and a few local fishermen.

We set out in the MPA’s surveillance pirogue, a solid vessel commissioned by the WWF. With help from some bystanding fishermen, we managed to push the boat down the beach and slide it into the water.
After we’d all jumped in, the boat was given a final heave, the motor was started and we set out into the choppy morning water. One of the gendarmes, anticipating his inclination to feel more than slightly queasy in such conditions, wasted no time in slicing in two and then sucking on a lemon brought specifically to ensure that his breakfast didn’t come up for a peek.

In this bathymetric map, you can see the marine canyon jutting into Cayar's MPA.

The process of delimiting Cayar’s MPA has partly been made difficult by its variation in depth, a consequence of a large marine canyon. Greater depths require bigger buoys, which can get quite expensive. The veteran fishermen that accompanied us were able to offer their expertise in ensuring that the chosen reproductive zones were fully included, and using the topographical knowledge that they’ve accumulated over the years they were even able to point out shallower areas, such as rock formations, that would make buoy placement easier.

      At each chosen location, the GPS coordinates were noted, and a metal weight attached to a fishing line was thrown overboard. In the video below, you can see Mar Mbaye, the president of the MPA’s management committee, measuring the depth by pulling the line up in calculated heaves. However, they determined that his armspan was not quite two meters, so that duty was handed over to Aliou Gaye, a fisherman on the surveillance committee, who had a practiced two-meter pull.

As I mentioned before, the sea was a little rough that day, and as the boat skimmed over the surface we were regularly subjected to painful bottoms smacks and drenching sprays (the former resulting from when the boat flew into the air after a big wave; as the vessel made its descent, our rears and the seats that supported them would become momentarily separated, and then violently reunited).

To escape the discomfort of being sprayed in the eyes, some of us sat with our backs to the front. This may have made things more comfortable, but it caused me to nearly miss a pair of orcas that had surfaced right as we were slowing to a stop over a chosen location. As soon as I was alerted to their presence I scrambled to my feet to get a look. For about a minute I had a bit of a rough time as I struggled to keep my balance and pull my camera out of its waterproof pocket, two tasks made even more difficult by my unwillingness to take my eyes away from the sea. While I did manage to get a good look at them for a few seconds, they were gone before the camera was on. All that was left to me was the memory and a shaky thirty-second long video of waves.

The mission was largely a success, and we managed to collect the GPS coordinates and corresponding depth information for one of the zone’s buoy positions.  However, as we ran out of fuel, we had to turn back early and missed out had to postpone getting those of the second zone for another day.

Update – December 11th

This morning we again set out to collect the data for the second zone. What now remains is to send this information to a few companies that specialize in buoys, compare their pricing schemes, and then buy them!

A strong wind

The weather this weekend was some of the best I’ve experienced since coming to Senegal. Cool winds weaved through the village, finding their way into our homes to free us all from the unrelenting heat of the day. For perhaps the first time since landing here, I was able to comfortably sit in a non-air conditioned room and not sweat constantly. Even the sharp sting of sand blowing in with the wind was a welcome sensation. Saturday night, I was in a state of such deep, blissfully ignorant sleep that I entirely tuned out the loud broadcasts being relayed by the mosque’s speakers, calling out to warn of the dangers facing the pirogues sitting about the beach and anchored at sea.

Early morning mayhem

Tall waves, estimated to be as high as six meters, came crashing down to wreak havoc about the shoreline, crippling fifty boats and damaging many others. The next day I went out to the beach behind the three quais de pêche, expecting to see upturned pirogues, broken hulls and generally a scene of chaos. However, while I did see one or two broken boats about, most of the debris had been cleared away and repairs were already well under way.
Most of the pirogues that received only minor injuries had been fixed up in place, and the those that had sustained more serious damage were pulled out to higher ground to be worked on more attentively. In a place where every day of fishing counts, they really don’t mess around.

Moving pirogues

Getting the bigger boats ashore is no easy task. As you can see in the background, many crews opt to simply anchor their pirogue in the shallow water and use a smaller one to ferry their catch to shore. This method does occasionally have its risks; five of these pirogues were heavily damaged after repeatedly ramming into each other during the rough weather.

The smaller pirogues, used primarily for line fishing, are easier to work with. By placing two wooden logs under the vessels, they’re able to quickly move them up shore, shouting a rhythmic chant to help time the pushes. It seems, however, that some were not far enough up the beach to entirely escape the waves, and forty-five were wrecked in this way. As a precaution after the morning’s events, most of the pirogues were hauled farther up the beach, and in some areas packed together so tight that there was barely enough space to squeeze by.

Roughly 300 fishermen were unable to go out to sea that day, and many pirogues still await the completion of repairs.  With the important festival of Tabaski coming up in less than two weeks, this is a difficult time to lose one’s means of income.  Luckily, some crews have secondary boats to turn to in these circumstances, and many of those displaced have also been able to find temporary work on other vessels.

Cayar

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It had taken roughly two hours, but we finally entered Cayar. After a week in Dakar, we’d made the long trip up the coast. This first time around, I didn’t fully appreciate just how we got here, as I hadn’t yet travelled in a ndiaga ndiaye.  I look back on the WWF’s car with longing every now and then, and how easy it was to quickly and comfortably drive right from their WAMER office in Sacre Cœur straight to the fishing village’s Service de Pêche. No stopping at Rufisque to find another slow, bumby ndiaga ndiaye with cramped seating, or sometimes none at all. No haggling at Bayakh while we wait for a taxi collectif to fill up to take us to Cayar, which could be a few hectic seconds or fourty-five slow minutes, depending on the time of day. But that first time, in the car, it was great.

The first things I noticed on our way in were all the half-finished buildings, scattered among the other houses and businesses. I later learned that they’re mostly left behind by those who migrate here for the high fishing season, known as la campagne. Every year, as they come back and earn a little more from their work, a little more gets built. Driving on, we picked up Babacar, a WWF employee who happened to be walking along the road, and waved him into the car. At this point, I was unaware that I had just met my bedmate for the next six months, but I learned that soon enough.

After being introduced to a few people of importance at the Service des Pêches, I was taken over to our accommodation, which is a comfortable room within the walled-off complex of the radio building built by the WWF a few years ago. The radio building still has no equipment to transmit, but we’re working on that. Our room, pictured right, is nice and cozy. We have a fridge, a fan, a tv with a surprisingly good selection of channels, and, perhaps most importantly, an adjoining bathroom with a western toilet.

Later in the day, I went out for a walk with Babacar to explore the village a little. Cayar has only one paved road, along which are settled most of the businesses and institutions of importance. The road was primarily constructed to facilitate the transport of fish and seafood, and so ends at the last of three quais de pêche, where catches are packed into large trucks to be sold in Dakar and beyond. The segment of road running next to the quais is crowded with various shops and stalls that make up the main marketplace.

By the time we got home, it was evening, a cool one with a good breeze.  We pulled an old foam mattress outside, covered it with a sheet and sat down to make some more tea over a portable stove. The skies were clear and the stars were bright, as it often is over here, and all in all it was a pretty good end to my first day in Cayar.