In Aného, there are two ways to look at the water. Facing south, the Atlantic Ocean is loud, dangerous, and swept by violent currents. Facing north, the lagoon system and Lake Togo stretch out like a mirror of flat water, silent and almost motionless.
It is on this mirror that the economic survival of thousands of families plays out daily. Artisanal fishing here is not postcard folklore. It is a precision industry, rooted in ancestral techniques, that today navigates a razor's edge between tradition, overfishing, and environmental urgency.
Far from the industrial trawlers that scrape the deep sea, here is how the people of the water (the Pédah, Pla, and Mina) draw their sustenance from the mud and the salt.
The Silent Ballet of the Cast Net (L'Épervier)
If you sit on the banks of Aného at daybreak, you will witness a scene of absolute grace. On the grey water, a slender pirogue monoxyle (a canoe carved from a single tree trunk) glides noiselessly. At the stern, a fisherman stands in precarious balance.
The Anatomy of the Motion
In his hands, he meticulously gathers the cast net (filet épervier). This circular net, weighted with lead sinkers around its entire perimeter, demands total physical mastery.
The fisherman watches the water. He spots tiny ripples on the surface—a sign that a school of small fish (often tilapia fry or shrimp) is moving just below. With a twisting motion of his torso, he throws the net. The net opens in the air, spreads out like an immense spider web, and hits the water's surface with a dull "splash."
The lead weights instantly drag the edges to the bottom, trapping the fish beneath the mesh cone. The fisherman then gently pulls the central rope to close the trap from the bottom and haul in his catch.
Gentle Fishing
This technique is the symbol of respectful artisanal fishing. It is targeted, motorless, and does not destroy the seabed. The catches are modest but regular: local carp, small blue lagoon crabs, and tilapia that will end up grilled in the courtyards of Adjido houses by noon.
The Acadja: The Architecture of Submerged Traps
But the cast net requires luck and physical effort. To maximize yields, fishermen in the region (and more broadly in the Gulf of Guinea, as this technique originated in neighboring Benin) heavily rely on the Acadja system.
The Forest Planted in the Water
If you observe the lagoon, you will notice entire areas where large dead branches stick out of the surface, like drowned forests. These are not trees that grew there by chance. They are artificial parks built by human hands.
The Acadja principle relies on an intimate understanding of fish behavior. The fisherman drives hundreds of leafy shrub branches into the sandy-muddy bottom of the lagoon, in shallow areas (usually about 1.5 meters or 5 feet deep).
Trap or Aquaculture?
These submerged brush parks serve a formidable dual purpose:
- Shelter: Fish come here to hide from predators and breed safely.
- Pantry: The decaying branches promote the growth of "periphyton" (a mixture of microscopic algae and microorganisms), the favorite food of carp and tilapia.
After a few months, the park is teeming with life. The fisherman then surrounds the entire brush park with a large net. He pulls out the branches one by one, and finally closes the net on what is often a miraculous catch. If he leaves the park in place for more than six months, the Acadja effectively becomes an extensive aquaculture system.
A Technique in the Crosshairs
Yet, despite its incredible efficiency, the Acadja is today at the center of a severe environmental controversy. First, to plant these parks, fishermen heavily cut down surrounding terrestrial shrubs, and worse, the precious mangroves. Second, the decomposition of tons of wood in a slow-flushing lagoon causes rapid silting of the bottom and a drop in oxygen levels, slowly asphyxiating the lagoon over the long term. The tension between authorities (who are trying to regulate or even ban certain parks) and fishing communities (for whom it is a matter of immediate survival) is palpable.
The Contrast of the Ocean: The Beach Seine
Turn your back to the lagoon, walk a few hundred meters, and cross National Route 2. On the beach, the fishing method changes scale radically.
Here, there is no silence or solitude. Oceanic fishing is a collective sport of unapologetic brutality. This is the domain of the beach seine (Senne de plage or Yovovi). A large motorized canoe braves the wave bar (one of the most dangerous in Africa) to drop a massive, semi-circular net several hundred meters offshore.
Back on the beach, the entire village springs into action. Men, young boys, and sometimes women divide themselves onto two giant ropes. For hours, under a blazing sun, to the rhythm of staccato chants that pace their effort, they haul the net toward the beach. It is a titanic effort. When it finally arrives, the net brings in pelagic species: sea bass, mackerel, small rays, and sometimes, by tragic mistake, marine turtles, which are quickly freed by the ecoguards.
An Uncertain Future
Eating a braised fish in Aného is not an insignificant act. Both the fresh water and the salt water are under converging pressures. Phosphate pollution, the artificial opening and closing of the Mono river mouth, and climate change are altering the lagoon's salinity, disrupting fish reproduction.
Yet, at sunrise, silhouettes still stand out against the lagoon. The cast net continues to open in the air. The resilience of Aného's fishermen, capable of reading the wind and currents, remains the last bastion of a water culture that refuses to sink. Buying local fish at the city's markets, at a fair price, remains the best way to support this struggle for existence.