Djibouti’s traditional fishermen lure a global market

With hook and bait in his calloused hands, Ali Mohamed casts his line, as fishermen in these warm waters have done for centuries.

Like the 300 or so other fishermen in their tiny boats on this breezy early morning, Ali uses no nets, no trawlers, no modern equipment. Yet the Djibouti fishermen this year may begin exporting to Europe and the United States, their catch marketed as safe, fresh and kind to nature.

Across the West, the scarcity of local fish has led consumers to scramble for seafood from remote corners of the world. Consumers also are becoming more aware of business practices and are demanding food from sources that don’t harm the environment.

And so, in a month or so, fresh grouper will be flown overnight, packed in ice, about 9,000 miles to the West Coast for the U.S. market -- labeled Africana Wild.

“We have almost fished our waters out,” says Donald Campbell of U.S.-based Gulf Marine Investments. Campbell is looking to fly 22,000 pounds of grouper each week from the hot, Massachusetts-sized republic of Djibouti to San Francisco, whose seas once teemed with the fish. “Consumers will pay a premium for sustainable, well-sourced fish.”

The shortages caused by overfishing elsewhere are reviving the hook-and-line industry off the Horn of Africa, whose waters are much prized and vastly underexploited. There are no deep swells here, and trawlers are banned from the craggy, 195-mile coastline.

“Our fishing industry was dying but now it is picking up again,” says Ali, his toothless grin, wild hair and weather-beaten face the norm among the men who rise hours before daybreak to catch fresh red snapper, grouper, barracuda and tuna.

Fishermen bring in a daily catch of around 3 tons. The World Trade Organization believes they can increase the take to 150 tons without depleting local stocks.

“But we do not want to plunder these seas,” says businessman Mehrdad Radseresht, a naturalized American and son of an Iranian diplomat, who has invested $3.5 million in port facilities with cold storage and a laboratory.

“We want to use fishing methods once thought old-fashioned to preserve stocks.”

His goal is a daily catch of around 15 tons of high-value fish, like tuna and swordfish, worth some $120 million a year. Radseresht is promising fresh fish on tables anywhere in the world within 48 hours.

As the majority shareholder in Djibouti Marine Management & Investments, he is providing fish cages, local nets, ice and credit to help rebuild the small Djiboutian fleet with more and larger boats and onboard processing facilities. Local fishermen are guaranteed a fixed price and can sell the entire catch, rather than having to negotiate with small traders supplying a limited, local market.

Radseresht is also in negotiations to fish coastal waters off the semiautonomous Puntland and Somaliland regions that neighbor Djibouti, where he can double the catch.

Yet the commercial overfishing that has given Djibouti its big chance also threatens it. This tiny African city-state will need to watch the neighbors that share its fish stock, particularly Eritrea, Yemen and Somalia.

All are looking to develop industrial fishing.