The trawlers can easily withstand sea turbulence and are able to mechanically haul netted fishes into pre-positioned storage rather than haul them by physical labour. The sturdy fishing trawlers, owned mostly by Asian and European companies, are able to drag better and stronger trawl nets over a large expanse of seabed. “They take all the fish and they destroy our nets.” “We are competing with big trawlers,” he said. Bangura lays blame on foreign trawlers scooping ashore almost every life form at the ocean floor. Some 37 species were classed as threatened with extinction and 14 more were said to be “near threatened” from Angola in the south to Mauritania in the north, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This is linked to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU) or fishing piracy. Overfishing occurs when more fish are caught than the population can replace through natural reproduction. “There are no fish nearby anymore,” lamented Mr. Fish populations are being lost due to overfishing, forcing boats like Alimamy’s to sail far from home. Tragedies such as these are common in Africa’s coastal nations but fishing itself is in deep trouble. Bangura, whose job includes the search and rescue of fishermen missing at sea, had dispatched a search party to recover Alimamy’s body. “It was a sad day for us in this village,” said Samuel Bangura, the local harbour master, who recounted the story to Africa Renewal.

He was tossed overboard and drowned, despite his colleagues’ frantic efforts to save his life. When the waters finally calmed, one of them, an 18-year-old named Alimamy, could not be found.Īlimamy had stood precariously on the canoe’s edge-something he was used to doing-onloading the fish when the storm waves hit. But as they hauled in their catch, a terrible storm blew in. They threw in their net and soon bagged a good quantity of fish. It was midnight on 14 December 2016, when five fishermen in Tombo village near Freetown in Sierra Leone revved up a small outboard engine and powered their boat far out to sea.

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