Paper short abstract:

This paper approaches the purse seine net in the context of Senegalese artisanal fisheries as a post-colonial developmentalist legacy with a promising past, a tumultuous present, and an uncertain future.

Paper long abstract:

Part of a rich repertoire of oceanic gears used in Senegalese artisanal fisheries and currently the one with which most catches are recorded on the shoreline, the purse seine net was introduced in the 1970s by the FAO and the state; introduced at a time when it had become evident that artisanal fisheries could not be replaced by industrial fisheries and should therefore be 'developed' instead. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Senegal’s largest artisanal fisheries town with fishers who have been mastering purse seines for three generations, I approach the net as a post-colonial developmentalist legacy with a promising past, a tumultuous present, and an uncertain future. The purse seine is indeed a legacy about which a Senegalese fisheries technician declared, reviewing the net’s past against the current fisheries predicament in the country, ‘the purse seine has not enabled to develop artisanal fisheries but to overexploit fisheries resources’; a legacy envied between fishers, given that this net remains the most socio-economically stratifying one within artisanal fisheries; a legacy whose days are momentarily numbered given the dwindling fish stocks and the considerable number of fishers migrating to Europe as a result, effectively reducing the workforce available to haul in the net.