Presentation

Studying the small-scale fisheries in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania and their conflicts with large-scale industrial fisheries is often viewed as an intellectually barren activity. However, the crucial point is that these small-scale fisheries are not merely a part of the informal economy that governments and scholars neglect; they play a major role in ensuring the food security of their country. Yet, they often go unnoticed in national statistics and even by fisheries economists. This work will connect the activities of distant-water fleets off West Africa with the life-threatening migration issues mentioned above, the desperate situation of small-scale fisheries in the region, and the food security issues associated with the processing of staple food in West Africa into fishmeal to feed salmon, e.g., in Norway. It would be an important contribution at a time when the issues of global equity and sustainability are rightly deemed important.