In the shadow of farmed salmons - fishing small pelagic fish for fish feed in Senegal: a critical analysis of a worlding practice

Salmon aquaculture corporations sell or present their products as a panacea to improve general health and to fight global food insecurity. This discourse hides the necessity to catch small pelagic fish – mostly in developing countries – to produce fishmeal and fish oil required to feed farmed salmons. The fishmeal and fish oil industry is thus involved in a processing of worlding that shadows the existence of other worlds by reducing the ocean life to “marine ingredients.” By doing so, wealthy consumers in the Global North become disconnected from food production processes involved in the food they eat. This dissertation aims at challenging that disconnect by embedding fishmeal and fish oil production geographically and historically inquiring thus the temporal and spatial underpinnings of fishing small pelagic fish for feed production. The shoreline of Senegal and the website of the International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Organization (IFFO) trade organization will be the empirical grounding of this research. This dissertation aims at illuminating spaces of shadows of the fishmeal and fish oil industry and its worlding practices in three moves. First, the French colonial past of the Senegalese marine fisheries participates in contextualizing a continued colonial relation to fisheries resources in Senegal nowadays. Second, a preparatory field trip concomitantly with a documentary analysis structure the use of liminality as a concept to cast light on spaces of shadows where women and men fish workers process fish for a livelihood. Third, the discourse expressed by the IFFO on its website is analyzed as a worlding practice that commodifies the ocean and marine lives, reducing them to ingredients. From this research stands out that by connecting contemporary problems historically and spatially, ethical concerns in food production are revealed. More, a critical stand is made possible against a totalizing and hegemonic discourse of the fishmeal and fish oil industry by pointing out to spaces of shadows that are produced in their worlding practices. Against this process of shadowing, liminality becomes a lens for other worlds to start unfolding.