realmozambique.org
A personal look at this intriguing country on the Indian
Ocean
Sea Shore Survival-Working the Seashore
More than 2500km of a lifeline
The AK47, with the hoe and
the yellow star, pictured as
part of the national flag,
revives memories of the
Marxist part of its recent
history.
South Africa to the south
and Tanzania to the north
plus Zimbabwe, Malawi,
Zambia and Swaziland.
Mozambique has more than 2500km of Indian Ocean with one of the few
seas or oceans not overfished to exhaustion. With the majority of the 20
million Mozambicans living on or near its coast the population depends
hugely on these waters for survival.

A recent fishing census
showed 90,000 small scale
fishermen, operating in 1,200
centres, with 24,000 boats, of
which only three per cent used
motors
Some people adapt a mosquito net, attach poles to
either end and drag it through the water at high tide.
This is the most controversial fishing method as the
very small mesh catches everything in its path. This can
damage severely the fish population. This is the only
form of fishing in which women participate. Fishing
organisations are making strenuous efforts to
encourage people to stop the practice.
These two young men are using a mosquito net on the
beach in Beira opposite the once-luxury Grand Hotel, in
which 3000 people are squatted without water or
electricity. Not only do the inhabitants of the hotel use the
beach for this type of fishing but they also use it as a
latrine and for romancing and playing football and drying
laundry...
These people are exploiting the coral rock that is
exposed at low tide in Ponta de Ouro, a small village in
the south on the border with South Afica. They use
turnscrews, knives and "catanas", a farming implement
for cutting, to find small shellfish or worms used in line
fishing. They do damage to the coral but they reply,
"We've always done it like this".
With dusk and a high tide a group of older
women in the northern town of Pemba
have, it appears, spotted a shoal of small
fish and are working with their mosquito
nets to trap them. With the catch on their
heads they head homeward before dark so
as not to meet the nightime spirits.
Many of the boats used in artisanal fishing
are dugout canoes as shown here. These
are heavy and cumbersome but are cheap
and, in any case, fishermen are quite
conservative and reluctant to change from
what they know best.
Men wait on the beach to haul in the nets. The women
and children arrive later to help share out the the catch.
Fishing, using dug-out canoes, is the most
communal of all types of artisanal fishing.
This is often village based. Many participate
in carrying the heavy canoes up and down
the beach and hauling in the nets.  The
canoes take the net some distance out from
the shore, drop it, and menpaddle back with
the two ends to the men waiting on the
beach. The seine net is designed with ring
weights on the bottom and a rope running
through them. As it is pulled towards shore
it closes and so helps to prevent fish
escaping.

This is not a very efficient method of fishing
and many efforts have made by various
organizations both governmental and
non-governmental to modernise it.
Understandably, local fishing villages are
very resistant to change. They instinctively
know that if one of the elements of the
method changes the communal aspect of it
will suffer.
The dugout canoes are taking back the the
ends of the net. They have to judge the
waves perfectly so,as to catch them at the
right moment and beach the canoe properly.
A communal effort: most of the young and old if there
are any, give a hand to drag the nets in. The work is
strenuous.
A lone fisherman's hut
alongside a windswept tree
on a beach near Beira in
central Mozambique.
Evening light on beached
canoes.
Where everybody gives a hand: both men
and women help to carry the canoe up the
beach after it has been taken out of the sea.
Shadows are short in the
mid-day glare as this man
sells his ready-to-cook
mackeral type fish.
These small fish taken with
mosquito nets have been left
out to dry on a Beira street.
They will be stored away for
later consumption or be sold
at the local informal market.
Another type of artisanal fishing is with
small wooden boats of 4m to 5m with a 3 to
5 man crew.  The owner of the boat gets
about 30% of the catch and the rest is
shared out among the crew. They drop their
gill nets, leave them and lift them later. Very
few of these are motorised but depend on
oars and a single sail. They sail with the
prevailing wind and often have to row back
or approach the shore so the crew can
jump in the water and push to home port. In
the Maputo area they fish principally shrimp
and "mugumba" a small and very bony but
delicious fish.
for worms on the coral.
They will be used as bait
for line fishing.
"Buy my fresh fish", this
woman is crying to
passers-by
Going home paddling a heavy
dugout canoe strains all the
muscles of the arms
Dropping the gillnet in
Maputo Bay
Fresh from the sea in Pemba
Exposed to the elements: a
fishing village in central
Mozambique
A recent law has extended the waters from which trawlers
are prohibited. Instead of being allowed to within a mile of
the coast they now cannot come nearer than 3 miles. This
gives small boats like these more protection.
Searching for small shellfish
Sorting out the mugumba fish which has just
been landed from Maputo Bay
In the late afternoon, boats return to a fishing village near
waiting with plastic basins. As it is low tide people wade
out to the fishing boats which are anchored a little way from
 shore.
In the fishing village, women sell a variety of
shellfish gathered at low tide
Of course, fishers are not the only people who
benifit from the seashore. In this photo the
Catembe ferry makes the crossing of the bay
from Maputo to Catembe carrying passengers
and cars.
There is some semi-industrial
and industrial fishing but by far
the most important, for the
population as a whole, is
artisanal fishing. There are
about 80000 people fishing
artisanally, providing
sustenance for more than 50,000
families (several hundreds of
thousands of people) and
supplying food for a large
proportion of the population.
Here, I have a look at the
favourite methods of artisanal
fishing, methods where
fishermen use handlines, beach
seines, gillnets and,
unfortunately, mosquito nets.
This woman is prising off
mussels off the same coral
rock.
This lady is using a "catana"
in her search for oysters.