{"id":18053,"date":"2025-07-20T19:47:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T19:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/sin-categorizar\/foreign-overfishing-fuels-senegals-deadly-migration-crisis-to-europe\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T18:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T18:42:08","slug":"foreign-overfishing-fuels-senegals-deadly-migration-crisis-to-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/academia-de-pesca-en-pequena-escala\/foreign-overfishing-fuels-senegals-deadly-migration-crisis-to-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign overfishing fuels Senegal\u2019s deadly migration crisis to Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

The decades-long overexploitation of the marine fisheries resources of most West African countries is one of the top drivers of illegal immigration to Europe via deadly routes through the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Strait of Gibraltar.<\/p>\n

In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies, an international team of researchers describes the incompatibility of interests that have been distorting Senegal\u2019s fisheries sector for decades, plundering the country\u2019s marine resources, and pushing thousands to pursue a better life in Europe, only to find death on the way.<\/p>\n

Only in 2024, over 10,000 people departing from African shores died on their way to EU countries. Of those, 2,000 people took the Senegal-Gambia route, according to NGO Caminando Fronteras.<\/p>\n

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Catches of various countries in the Senegalese EEZ, smoothed by a running average (over three years) to make trends more visible. The \u2018Other countries\u2019 category includes France, Italy, and other E.U. countries, but all with catches much smaller than Spain\u2019s<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIn Senegal and neighbouring countries, small fish such as sardines are now scarce, and whatever is left is mostly diverted to fishmeal plants. These fish used to supply low-income consumers. High-value fish and invertebrates are also in decline and tend to be exported by foreign operators,\u201d said Dr. Daniel Pauly, lead author of the study and principal investigator of the University of British Columbia\u2019s Sea Around Us initiative.<\/p>\n

The overexploitation of Senegal\u2019s fisheries resources started to be felt in the 1990s. After three decades of high-capacity European vessels fishing intensively in its waters, China entered the area in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Senegal\u2019s traditional, family-operated boats, or pirogues, underwent a modernization process aimed at maintaining their catch in the face of increasing competition from foreign distant-water fleets.<\/p>\n<\/div>

The pirogue modernization involved adding engines and iceboxes, using nylon nets and purse seines, and having crews of over 20 fishers. They were able to target more of the groundfish and small fishes, such as sardines, that they were used to catching and started targeting high-value species like shrimp, tuna, octopus and squid, also caught by foreign boats.<\/p>\n

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By Marie Vicat on Pixabay<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSenegal saw peak catches in the 1990s, when over 1 million tonnes of fish were caught per year, on average. This figure dropped by half in recent years,\u201d Dr. Pauly said. \u201cIn our paper, we analyzed the trajectory of the population of Madeiran sardinella<\/a> and found that it went from underfished in the 1950s to overfished in the 2010s and continues to be so. We also looked at another 10 species, such as round sardinella<\/a>, chub mackerel<\/a>, and horse mackerel<\/a>, and found that most have low to very low biomass.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roughly, half of the catch in the Senegalese Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) has been taken by distant-water fishing fleets in the past seven decades, which is higher than the 40 per cent average for Africa as a whole.<\/p>\n

In addition to overfishing, climate change is causing certain species, such as sardinellas, to disappear as they have begun migrating northward because the waters of Senegal and neighbouring countries have become too warm for them to thrive.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\u201cShrinking resources have created an intense competition between local and foreign fleets. Foreign capital has ended up absorbing most of the economic returns, leaving Senegalese boat-owning families scrambling,\u201d said Dr. Cornelia Nauen, co-author of the study and president of the non-profit association Mundus maris<\/em>. \u201cDeclining economic returns led boat-owning families to reduce their support for crew members. Women in these families<\/a>, who used to have considerable income and managerial clout, ended up as paupers or factory workers. This, combined with long-standing difficulties in implementing marine governance strategies that allow for fish population recovery, has turned emigration into an option considered by an increasing number of families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Ms Khady SARR hails from a traditional fishing family in Hann, Senegal; here during an interview<\/p>\n

Although in the 1980s, fishers and boat captains helped migrants mostly from drought-affected agricultural areas make the hazardous trip across the ocean to the Canary Islands and other EU ports, nowadays many fishers themselves do the trek.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore and more, the numerous arrivals and losses of life at sea are shedding a fresh light on the complexities between macro-trends, such as drought, overfishing, and climate change, and other factors such as the desire for a better life, the perceived high living standards in Europe, the lack of access to education and other opportunities at home, the political instability, a lack of security, and the pull factors of the diaspora,\u201d Nauen said. \u201cEven the European press has made note of this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>

In addition to analyzing fisheries catches and assessing the stocks of 10 species fished in the Senegalese EEZ, the authors examined 105 media articles published between 2000 and 2025, which reported on Senegalese fisher migration to Europe. They found that 59 per cent of the news stories presented distant-water fleets as having contributed to out-migration from the West African country to the EU.<\/p>\n

\u201cEuropean and Chinese distant-water fleets are heavily subsidized, and this is what allows them to maintain pressure on overfished stocks,\u201d said Dr. Rashid Sumaila, co-author of the paper and director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at UBC\u2019s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. \u201cReducing and gradually eliminating subsidies to EU vessels would result in an increase in fish populations in the EU, therefore improving fish supply in the region and curbing the need to fish elsewhere. It would also enable EU negotiators to insist that Russia, China, and other East Asian countries reduce their subsidization of fishing vessels.\u201d \u201cMany international agreements underpin this idea, but there is an implementation gap,\u201d adds Dr. Nauen.<\/p>\n

The full open access paper \u201cFrom science to conscience: the plunder of Senegal\u2019s fisheries resources, or Europe\u2019s role in the making of a migration crisis\u201d was published in Proceedings of the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies<\/em>, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5281\/zenodo.15833918<\/a><\/p>\n

Further reading<\/em><\/p>\n

As European countries measure -and some brag about- who detained the most illegal migrants and discuss measures to halt the unregulated entry of foreign nationals, thousands of people continue to die on their journeys by sea from Africa to Europe. Click here<\/a><\/p>\n

Over 10,000 people departing from African shores died on their way to Europe in 2024, according to the NGO Caminando Fronteras<\/a>.<\/p>\n

MongaBay News: Illegal fishing and its consequences – the human toll of migration in Senegal<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academia-de-pesca-en-pequena-escala","category-frenar-la-sobrepesca"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18053"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18626,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18053\/revisions\/18626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mundusmaris.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}