We are pleased to announce the upcoming E-book by the Dried Fish Matters Partnership which will celebrate the cultural value of dried fish as food, alongside its social and economic value for development and sustainability. The volume consists of essays, recipes, stories, and reflections contributed by members of our research partnership. It provides a commentary on why dried fish matters – to researchers, to the communities in which dried fish is produced and consumed, and to the gastronomic heritage of humanity.
The book will be released as part of the TBTI Global Book Series later this year. In the meantime, we offer an appetizer in the form of a video from Dried Fish Matters in celebration of Sustainable Gastronomy Day on June 18, 2022.
Link to the Sustainable Gastronomy Day video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6woaG8hVME
In addition to the book, we would also like to share a recipe that our colleague over at the Hungrylankan.com, Roshani Wickramasinghe made. Please enjoy the delicious dish, Dried Queenfish with Coconut Milk!
University of Ottawa graduate student Colleen Cranmer created this infographic to present the goals and achievements of the SSHRC-funded Dried Fish Matters Partnership, which will be supporting her research in Cambodia. Thanks to Colleen for building awareness of our Partnership and its impacts!
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
Credits: District Fishermen’s Youth Welfare Association (DFYWA)
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
Credits: Dried Fish Matter Bangladesh team
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.
We have reached the midpoint of our 7-year SSHRC Partnership Grant. In completing our midterm reporting exercise, we compiled some numbers about the project that are shared in the infographic below. We’re very proud of the 100+ students, collaborators, and co-investigators in our partnership, who have worked hard over the past three years to develop research on the economic, cultural, and nutritional importance of dried fish.
Despite the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DFM project has succeeded in fostering collaboration across more than 30 partner organizations. Our teams have worked together to produce, for example, a series of audiovisual documents exploring the cultural and sensorial dimensions of dried fish and have presented at virtual events including the World Ocean Week Small-Scale Fisheries Open House and the MARE “People and the Sea” Conference in 2021. Work toward a collectively authored e-book and digital humanities exhibition is currently underway.
Our primary research has produced several important findings that will guide our work in the second stage of the project. We have learned, for example, that:
Dried fish production is expanding in Sri Lanka, but corresponding investments are not being made to supply chain management or value addition.
The fishmeal industry in Karnataka is diverting fish away from human consumption, presenting a threat to food and nutrition security.
Dried fish from the Bay of Bengal is highly contaminated with microplastics.
Intergenerational transmission of female involvement in dried fish processing in Andhra Pradesh appears to have broken down.
We have also discovered evidence of the deep cultural value associated with dried, smoked, and fermented fish around the world. Our exhaustive review of the global literature on dried fish confirms that many of the challenges identified by DFM partners – notably concerning social relations, cultural value, and food and nutrition security – are severely underrepresented in both academic and applied research.
Many thanks to all our collaborators, wishing you the greatest fortune in your work in the second half of our project!
