But in the rush for sardinella, global business interests are snatching a staple of West Africa’s diet from the people who need it the most. And the blades of the grinding machines are posing a new threat to the species at a time when climate change already has sardinella swimming for its life.

“In four or five years, there won’t be any fish stocks left; the factories will close, and the foreigners will leave,” said Abdou Karim Sall, president of an association of small-scale fishermen in Senegal known by its French acronym, Papas. “We’ll be left here without any fish.”

Satellite data indicate that the waters off northern Senegal and Mauritania are warming faster than any other part of the equator-girdling belt called the tropical convergence zone, once known to sailors simply as the “doldrums.” This hidden-from-view climate change has had an ominous impact: A new study by researchers at the Marseille-based institute IRD-France found that the rising temperatures have pushed sardinella an average of 200 miles north since 1995.









The findings, the results of which were shared with Reuters, provide the first clear evidence that West Africa’s sardinella are joining a worldwide diaspora of sea creatures fleeing poleward or deeper as waters warm. The sheer scale of this mass migration dwarfs anything taking place on land: Fish are moving 10 times farther on average than terrestrial animals affected by rising temperatures, according to Professor Camille Parmesan, an authority on climate impacts on marine life at the University of Plymouth.

Climate change is not only displacing sardinella from their traditional habitat, it’s putting pressure on the fish in another, indirect way, by increasing the incentives for West African fishmeal production even further.

Peru is by far the world’s biggest exporter of fishmeal, manufactured from its vast shoals of anchovies. As such, the country exerts an influence on fishmeal prices comparable to Saudi Arabia’s role as a swing producer of crude oil. Since the early 1970s, the El Niño weather phenomenon has periodically caused catastrophic losses to Peru’s gigantic anchovy catch by disrupting the upwelling mechanism that provides that fish with nutrients. In the past decade, climate change appears to have increased the frequency of El Niño’s effects, which can in turn cause fishmeal prices to track significantly higher.

This growing volatility might bode well for West Africa’s fishmeal producers, who stand to make more money each time prices spike. But overproduction could have dire consequences for millions of the region’s people, by endangering the fish they depend on for their primary source of employment, income and protein.

Demand for fishmeal has already caused Mauritania’s annual catch of sardinella to surge from 440,000 tons to 770,000 tons within the space of a few years, according to a European Union-funded report published in 2015. Senegalese boats working under contract to the plants increased their landings tenfold between 2008 and 2012 alone, the report found. The Canary Current’s fish stocks, marine scientists say, won’t be able to withstand this kind of pressure for much longer.

Coastal communities in West Africa are already among the populations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Rising seas have begun to swallow coastal villages whole, while rougher weather is making fishing ever more perilous. Droughts and irregular rainfall have forced farmers to abandon their land and head for the shore, swelling the fast-growing ranks of men whose best hope of feeding their families lies beyond the breakers.

But on the spit of land in Nouadhibou where laborers await the arrival of the next truckload of fish, factory bosses shrug their shoulders at talk of the swirling shoals of sardinella ever running out.

“Fish are still abundant,” El-Mami said, gesturing toward a nearby beach with a grin. “If you take your fishing rod over there now, you’ll catch a beautiful fish.”