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You're a fisherman in Mbour. For three generations, your family has lived from the sea. But for the past five years, industrial trawlers — flying foreign flags, operating under opaque licences — emptied the seabed. Catches fell by 70%. Your canoe often returns empty. Your kids eat less.
A congressman contacts you. The state has negotiated an agreement: in exchange for the silence of fishermen on trawlers' practices, a fish processing plant will settle in your commune. Five hundred jobs. Two for your sons.
To accept is to betray the sea that fed you. This is to support the plundering of common resources. But it's also giving work to your sons.
To refuse is to hold a position of dignity. But the trawlers will continue — With or without your consent. And your sons will continue to look for work.
What do you choose?
- Accept : pragmatism and immediate family survival, at the cost of complicity with looting.
- Refuse and resist : join the fishermen's collectives, refuse the agreement, and fight for sustainable fishing.
