{"id":16187,"date":"2015-08-10T00:11:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T07:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/features\/sole-food"},"modified":"2019-03-20T11:01:56","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T18:01:56","slug":"sole-food","status":"publish","type":"custom_features","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/features\/sole-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Sole Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

A silvery fish with a yellow forked tail lands on the sand, and immediately a little hand grabs it. The boy, maybe five or six years old, weaves through a convoy of porters carrying basins full of fish and trots to the water\u2019s edge. There he washes off his prize, a fish known locally as bonga. Out to sea a short way, a long wooden canoe rests at anchor while fishermen unload their catch into the porters\u2019 basins. The muscular youths, up to their waists in the surf, balance the loads on their heads and then run from the sea and across the sand, trailed by kids ready to scoop up anything that tumbles out. Women await the catches with wheelbarrows lined up at the top of the beach. Here in Tanji, as in the other fishing communities dotting The Gambia\u2019s tiny 80-kilometer coastline, women prepare the fish for market, smoking or drying them, so they will last for months.<\/p>\n

In the midst of this activity, a crate lying on the sand holds a pile of especially ugly fish. They resemble flattened tongues, and their faces are twisted out of shape, an adaptation to swimming on their sides. Both of their eyes are on top, staring skyward, while their crooked mouths curve downward. Certainly unlovely, these red and black sole are undervalued by Gambian fishermen, too: prices are low, largely because locals prefer meatier fish that a family can share from the same bowl at dinnertime.<\/p>\n

Yet these mostly unwanted sole may transform fishing in The Gambia. They lie at the center of plans to create the first artisanal fishery in Africa certified as \u201csustainable\u201d by international eco-labeling standards. To make it happen, the government has taken the bold step of giving fishermen an equal stake in running the fishery. Now, Gambians are realizing a host of benefits on the way to certification.<\/p>\n

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The Gambia has one of the shortest coastlines in Africa, but its fisheries still provide food for Gambians far inland, and convoluted trade networks export dried fish to neighboring countries. Somewhere around 1,700 family-owned boats provide the catch. Fishermen motor offshore in canoes with outboard engines and dip their nets into the Canary Current, a swirling torrent that sweeps along the West African coast. It draws up deep, nutrient-rich water and triggers a seafood bonanza, comprising everything from barracuda and mackerel to stingrays, cuttlefish, and enormous sea snails.<\/p>\n

Even with productive seas, Gambian fisheries have been struggling. A few decades ago, fishing was easy from traditional sailboats and dugout canoes. Things began to change when the government introduced a national development program aimed at increasing fishing effort and exploiting this bonanza.<\/p>\n

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Fishermen in The Gambia ply their trade in these colorful open boats. Photo by Helen Scales<\/p><\/div>\n

The national policy enabled fishermen to build bigger boats and buy motors, forgoing paddles and sails. This increased catch size and put fish stocks under pressure. Coincidental with this was the problem of fishermen moving in from surrounding areas. Some large, foreign trawlers ventured illegally close to shore, tearing up fishing nets and whisking away the locals\u2019 future catches. Gradually, fishermen had to venture farther from shore to make a living. Back on land, the growing fishing industry spawned corrupt middlemen, who fixed prices and controlled access to processing plants and the wider marketplace.<\/p>\n

The path to certification began in 2008, when a local group called the Gambia Artisanal Fisheries Development Agency had an ingenious idea: get local fish eco-labeled. With such a multitude of problems, a label wasn\u2019t a cure-all, but if the fishing industry improved its eco-credentials perhaps it could open new markets, improve cash flow, and secure the fisherfolks\u2019 livelihoods. So the agency approached the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a United Kingdom-based nonprofit that bestows coveted eco-labels. Worldwide, MSC\u2019s blue stickers denote fish from fisheries that have minimal environmental impact. (MSC certifies around 10 percent of the world\u2019s wild fish catch). An MSC eco-label could open the way to Western supermarkets, where demand for sustainable seafood is rising.<\/p>\n

All the local group had to do was create a sustainable fishery\u2014not as easy as it sounds. The group asked MSC which fishery would be the best and was disappointed when the initial assessment concluded with bad news: none of The Gambia\u2019s fisheries met the MSC\u2019s standards. It wasn\u2019t clear, for example, whether threatened species were being caught. Yet despite all the troubles, it turned out that the MSC\u2019s standards weren\u2019t too far out of reach. In fact, fisheries for two fish species\u2014black and red sole\u2014were close. Fishermen commonly pull these underrated fish from nets when targeting other species, such as the more valuable catfish. An eco-label could make the plentiful sole by-catch a more welcome sight along the coast. Western palates already appreciate this thin, twisted fish, and Gambian sole aren\u2019t currently being heavily overfished. The MSC\u2019s main concern was lack of oversight. To merit the sticker, the fishery needed monitoring so stocks remain healthy.<\/p>\n

To keep momentum going, the Gambian government supported the eco-label bid, seeing it as part of plans to fix deeper-seated problems in coastal fisheries. They partnered with international researchers under a project dubbed BaNafaa (from local words meaning \u201cgift of the sea\u201d). Everyone involved in BaNafaa agreed early on that local fishermen would share ownership of the sole fishery with the government through a syndicate of local committees, one from each fishing village. Fisheries fall firmly under government control, making power sharing an unusual, but not unprecedented, arrangement: in adjacent Senegal, a co-managed octopus fishery doubled in size after a few years. With its short coast, The Gambia had an opportunity to roll out a co-management initiative across the nation\u2019s coastline. But would it work?<\/p>\n

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