‘Bahari Imekufa, The Sea is Dead’: Local Perceptions of Ocean Health and Ocean Wealth among Fishers on the Kenyan Coast

ABSTRACT

Using narratives that I recorded in June/July 2021 on Kenya’s south coast with fishers belonging to three different generations, this paper provides insights into local articulations of changes that have happened in the sea over time. These changes — which call to mind ocean wealth and ocean health — have culminated in the increasing unproductivity of the ocean, which has led some shore folk to imagine that ‘the sea is dead’, as one of my interlocutors phrased it. What has caused the death of the sea? What does it mean for the sea to die? What will a dead ocean look like and what implications will it have for fishers? How are fishers responding to threats of a dying sea? By examining the local articulations of changes that are happening in the sea, I attempt answers to these questions. I also ask: How do the shore folk on the Kenyan coast account for these changes? In trying to seek answers to the factors underlying these changes, I am confronted with accounts of rituals that have been discontinued and find that these discontinued rituals have been put forth as explanations for the changes in question, most of which are negative.

KEYWORDS:

• Kenyan coast
• ocean health
• ocean wealth
• dying sea
• fishing rituals

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to Mzee Omari, Mvuvi Halim, Mvuvi Salim and Mvuvi Diani for their generosity and willingness to narrate their experience of the sea over time.

Notes

1 United Nations, “Sustainable Development Goals,” accessed at https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal14.

2 United Nations, “Sustainable Development Goals.”

3 This pronouncement may, however, have been premature as soon after, certain forms of bacteria and algae were discovered in the Dead Sea (see Nissenbaum 1975, 139–140). Nonetheless, the Dead Sea does little to support human life in the traditional sense in which large water bodies serve humans – as a source of food and income (the Dead Sea’s usefulness as a natural resource for chemicals and salts notwithstanding).

4 I note, however, that this image of an empty sea is inconsistent with recent research in oceanic studies, which challenges the perceived emptiness of the sea. See, for example, Clarke (2019, 153–72), and Bystrom and Hofmeyr (2017, 1–6).

5 These are not the real names of the four fishers.