West Africa is rich in marine resources and this highly rated form of protein should feed its people. Instead the traditional fishing economies are collapsing as fleets from Europe and the Far East in ever bigger and more destructive trawlers are sucking dry the fishing grounds. For the fishermen of Mauritania, it is getting hard to make a living. Having to venture out further to sea, their small boats are at risk of capsizing in a storm or being overrun by the foreign trawlers.
Fishing also plays a major role in Cape Verde, an archipelago of islands located 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa.