Aboud Bakari learned to tie a fishing trap the way his father and grandfather did before him, a craft passed down so precisely he says it lives in his DNA. It is that kind of inheritance, generations deep, that this episode follows across four countries as the sea itself becomes less and less predictable.
In Tanzania, Aboud fishes fewer sacks for the same effort. In Somalia, Hassan Ali Yusuf describes trips that once took a morning now stretching into a full day and night, chasing fish that no longer follow the patterns their fathers taught them to read. In Malawi, Akim James remembers swimming a hundred meters from shore to set a net as a boy. Now boats travel as far as Mozambique and back in a single trip, chasing fish pushed further out by motor noise and warming water.
Behind the depleted catch sits a system few fishers control. In Algeria, researcher Nadjib Adda traces how contractors who have never set foot on a boat now dictate prices to fishers who have spent their lives at sea. In Somalia, foreign trawlers work through the night with equipment no artisanal fisher can match, exporting Somali fish that return to the world labeled as someone else's catch.
Yet the trade endures because people choose to keep it alive. As Akim puts it, fishing is culture, inheritance, and a way of life.
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Featuring Aboud Bakari Aboud / Akim James / Hassan Ali Yusuf / Nadjib Adda
Executive Producer Wangui Kimari Creative Director Jim Chuchu Producer Njeri Gitungo Country Productions Ajabu Ajabu / Dusty Orange Projects Et Al / Maher Mezahi and Zahra Rahmouni / Said Fadhaye Research Lead Brock Hicks Project Communications Cynthia Kemunto Post Production Africa Post Office (APO) Post Production Supervisor Carole Kinyua Editors Gloria Ndiritu / Winnie Ndirangu Supervising Editor Jim Chuchu