https://news.yahoo.com/how-a-third-of-all-fish-caught-in-the-ocean-is-turned-into-something-that-no-one-eats-155202720.html
Ian Urbina, The Outlaw Ocean Project
·Contributor
Mon, October 24, 2022 at 8:52 AM·4 min read
The oceans are running out of fish. To slow down that problem, environmentalists pushed for fish farming, or aquaculture. This was supposed to be the solution, but it ended up being a problem on its own. This industry became too big and too hungry. To fatten the farmed fish faster, they started feeding them high-protein pellets, called fish meal, made from massive amounts of fish caught at sea and pulverized into powder. Now more than 30% of all marine life pulled from the sea goes to feed other, on-land fish.
To explore this upside-down situation, the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., traveled to West Africa for an offshore patrol where hundreds of Chinese and other fishing boats trawl for fish meal production, cratering the local food source and polluting the coastline.
The fifth episode of “The Outlaw Ocean” podcast, from CBC Podcasts and the L.A. Times, discusses fish meal — which virtually everyone eats without knowing it, and which was meant to slow down the seas from running out of fish but is actually accelerating the problem — and the grim consequences it has brought to continental Africa’s smallest country, Gambia. Listen to it here:
Gunjur, a town of some 15,000 people, sits on the Atlantic coastline of southern Gambia. In the spring of 2017, the town’s white-sand beaches were full of activity. Fishermen steered long, vibrantly painted wooden canoes, known as pirogues, toward the shore, where they transferred their still-fluttering catch to women waiting at the water’s edge. The fish were hauled off to nearby open-air markets in rusty metal wheelbarrows or baskets balanced on heads. Small boys played soccer as tourists watched from lounge chairs. At nightfall, the beach was dotted with bonfires. There were drumming and kora-playing lessons; men with oiled chests grappled in traditional wrestling matches.
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But just five minutes inland was a more tranquil setting — the wildlife reserve known as Bolong Fenyo, meant to protect 790 acres of beach, mangrove swamp, wetland and savanna, as well as an oblong lagoon. A marvel of biodiversity, the reserve was integral to southern Gambia’s ecological and economic health; it draws hundreds of birders and other tourists each year.
But on the morning of May 22, 2017, the Gunjur community woke to discover that the Bolong Fenyo lagoon had turned a cloudy crimson overnight. Dead fish floated on the surface. Some residents wondered if the apocalyptic scene was an omen delivered in blood. More likely, water fleas in the lagoon had turned red in response to sudden changes in pH or oxygen levels. Soon there were reports that many of the area’s birds were no longer nesting near the lagoon.
A local microbiologist concluded that the waters contained double the amount of arsenic and 40 times the amount of phosphates and nitrates deemed safe. Pollution at these levels could have only one source: illegally dumped waste from a Chinese-owned fish-processing plant called Golden Lead, which operates on the edge of the reserve.
Golden Lead and other factories were rapidly built to meet exploding global demand for fish meal, which is exported to the United States, Europe and Asia to be used for aquaculture. West Africa is among the world’s fastest-growing producers of it: More than 50 processing plants operate along the shores of Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and Gambia. And the volume of fish they consume is enormous. One Gambian plant alone takes in more than 7,500 tons of fish a year, mostly of a local type of shad known as bonga — a silvery fish about 10 inches long.
The residents of Gunjur were told that Golden Lead would bring jobs, a fish market and a newly paved 3-mile road. In reality, the plant’s putrid odor closed a booming beachfront hotel, the local fish market is dwindling, and the winding, pothole-filled road is a safety concern for residents and tourists alike.
For the area’s fishermen, most of whom toss their nets by hand from pirogues powered by small outboard motors, the rise of aquaculture transformed their working conditions. Hundreds of legal and illegal foreign fishing boats, including industrial trawlers and purse seiners, began crisscrossing the waters off the Gambian coast, decimating the region’s fish stocks and jeopardizing local livelihoods. A local fisherman who sold his catch at the Tanji market, north of Gunjur, said that two decades ago bonga were so plentiful they were sometimes given away for free. But the price of the fish has soared in recent years, and for many Gambians, half of whom live in poverty, bonga is now more expensive than they can afford.
Today Gambia exports much of its fish meal to China and Norway, where it fuels an abundant and inexpensive supply of farmed salmon for European and American consumption. Meanwhile, the fish that Gambians themselves rely on are rapidly disappearing.
Ian Urbina is the director of the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.
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