Keya the Fisher
Continuing an ancient fishing tradition
“I was about 15 years-old when I learned to fish with traps,” says Keya as he cuts long strips of wood with his knife to fashion a traditional fishing basket. In his village on Wasini Island in southern Kenya, this fishing method is an ancient practice. Children learn it from their parents, who learned it from their parents, going back generations -- a fishing practice that’s both functional and a piece of vital cultural heritage.
As this grandfather grows older, Keya has decided it’s better these days to fish with others. He doesn’t own a canoe himself, so every morning he joins his neighbor Kiboga and his son to paddle out to the reef on their boat. They scan the sea floor for the basket traps they left the day prior, waiting patiently to see what fish have entered in search of food.
“We depend on fishing, and our parents depended on it as well,” says Keya. “If the reef disappeared, life would become very hard for us -- without fish, there would be no life.”
Keya readies his fishing gear as the tide goes out. He goes out fishing every day weather permitting, except on Fridays, “a holy day for Muslims,” he says. Most days, he fishes with 57-year-old Kiboga and Kiboga's son, Mwinyihajiin.
Keya and Mwinyihajiin paddle from Wasini onto the reef. The fishers use seaweed and crustaceans as bait to lure their catch into basket traps, an ancient artisanal fishing method Keya learned from his older brother as a child.
Reefs around Wasini are diverse. Some are brilliantly healthy and teeming with fish, usually thanks to careful community management and closures that give fish time to rebound. Other areas are badly overfished and damaged, making catch hard to come by.
Kiboga and Mwinyihajiin pull a fishing trap out of the sea as Keya paddles. As the owner of the boat, Kiboga takes a larger share of their daily catch leaving Keya an average of KES500, or US$5 per day. “I don’t have a canoe,” says Keya, explaining that if he had his own canoe he might go by himself and net a larger share of the profits that way. “But I’m growing old anyway, so it’s easier for me to go with others."
A fish is pulled to the surface in a woven trap.
Kiboga shows off the day's haul. The men clean the fish as they paddle back to their village, where they will sell their catch to a dealer on Wasini.
Keya and his partners stop in at a local catch monitoring site when they get back to shore, where a WCS team member helps them measure the fish and log their catch. Over long periods of time, this data helps WCS and local communities track fish populations and the health of their coral reefs.
After a long day’s work, Keya returns to his home in Mkwiro Village. “When I grew up, we saw our parents and their parents surviving off the sea.”
These days, fishing isn’t as reliable as it once was. Many coastal areas have become sorely overfished. “If there’s no fishing, there will be no life for us here.”
Keya’s family gathers in their home for an evening meal.
One of Keya’s daughters, Zainab, checks her cellphone after dinner. At 20 years old, Zainab had to return to their village as schools in Mombasa shut down due the COVID-19 pandemic. She can’t wait to go back to finish school, where she plans to get a degree in religion and science. In the meantime, she spends her days helping her mother with chores at home.
“The money I make from fishing isn’t enough for us,” says Keya, who explains that while Zainab does well in school, he won’t be able to afford for her to continue her studies. For now, the money that he makes every day fishing is just enough to cover the basics, but the family has high hopes for the future. “One day, I want to become a teacher and come back to my village to teach the children here,” Zainab says.
Coral reefs are the most diverse and productive ecosystems in the world’s oceans. They occupy just .1% of the sea, yet are home to 25% of all marine species. East Africa’s Coral Refuge is a critical source of food and livelihoods for people like Keya all across Kenya and Tanzania. Let’s work together to safeguard these globally important reefs for the benefit of communities, the marine ecosystem, and the world: Join us and learn more about WCS’s coral reef conservation work .
