What does Blue Justice for Small-Scale Fisheries look like?
Launched in celebration of World Fisheries Day 2021, our partner TBTI Global is hosting a virtual tour that showcases the realities of small-scale fisheries from around the world.
The 19 short video case studies collected by TBTI highlight the urgency of creating a more equitable and just space for small-scale fisheries.
Dried Fish Matters is proud to be part of this initiative.
Three of our research teams – DFM West Bengal, DFYWA (Andhra Pradesh), and DFM Bangladesh – contributed images and videos from their fieldwork on dried fish value chains. These videos offer vivid documentation of dried fish processors and traders’ livelihoods, illustrating governance challenges related to social justice issues such as income insecurity, child labour, contested land tenure, and environmental change.
Dried Fish Processing in the Indian Sundarbans
Credits: Aishik Bandyopadhyay, Raktima Ghosh, Jenia Mukherjee, Amrita Sen, Anuradha Choudry, Shreyashi Bhattacharya, Swarnadeep Bhattacharjee and Souradip Pathak
The combined riparian and coastal topography of West Bengal hosts a great many varieties of fish that builds the dietary habit of her people. Fish is not only consumed in its raw, unprocessed form, but it is equally popular in its salted and unsalted dried version, enriched in nutritive elements. Traditional fish drying process involves many people who participate in different phases of the operation along the coastlines of Bengal in order to eke out their living. Apart from the market-driven value, dried fish, associates a deep sociocultural, ecological and sustenance relations with the local people of Indian Sundarbans, a part of the world’s largest delta carved by the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna river systems in combined India and Bangladesh. This video presents the story of dried fish and those who have long engaged themselves in fish drying practices at Frasergunj village of Indian Sundarbans, West Bengal.
Living on the edge: Small-scale women fish processors of northern coastal Andhra Pradesh, India
On the Northeastern coast of Andhra Pradesh, women who process and trade in dried fish have experienced increasing hardships. With the concentration of fish trade at major harbours, women must take long journeys to do business at sites that provide no water source for drinking or washing, no toilets, and no place to rest. In the villages, urbanization and development have reduced available beach drying areas, either through direct encroachment or through erosion caused by altered landscapes. Due to the lack of secure land tenure, women are unable to invest in the maintenance or construction of fish drying infrastructure.
Child Labour in Dried Fish Processing in Bangladesh
The use of child labour in fish processing is extremely common, in both inland and marine drying sites in Bangladesh. It is customary for children to support their parents by providing assistance in family-run drying operations, but paid work is also very common. Extremely young children may be observed conducting such work. This video presents visual documentation of child labourers at fish drying yards in Bangladesh, including Rohingya refugees and internal migrants displaced by natural disasters.