Artisanal fishing boat with a crew of some twenty men fishing with a purse-seine networked by hand in some 20km (3 hours) at sea on the northern border of Gambia. This kind of open boat is known locally as a pirogue fishing with a "fillet tournant."
We spent over 3 hours motoring out to a spot out of sight of the shore, where I counted some 25 similar pirogues averaging over 25M long that were looking for fish in the same area. The crew made two deployments of the big net, but the fishing was poor, filling less than 10% of the boat's holding capacity, before turning back to try again the next day.
Joal has been the most productive fishing area in Senegal for the past few decades, but fishing has declined in recent years. This boat was from Joal and had gone as far south as it could legally to look for fish. I was told that for the past six weeks, almost no fish have been landed here, as active fishing boats have had to go elsewhere. Most of the fish they were landing appeared to be small pelagic fish such as sardinelle and mackrel.
