Retired fisherman Sada Fall is upbeat. His two sons are returning from sea with a boatload of “gold”, as he calls shark fins, whose value has near-obliterated the ocean’s top predator in these seas.
Fall, 62, walks along the beach in this fishing village in the north of Senegal, his blue-grey boubou flapping in the dry, dusty wind, a bright red flowered umbrella shielding him from the scorching sun.
“This is the great shark cemetery,” he says waving his hand dramatically across the beach where dried hunks of shark meat are piled up, filling the air with a musty, acrid odour as suffocating as the heat.
Saint Louis is one of the biggest shark landing sites in Senegal and one of scores along the west African coast where the predator is quickly disappearing.
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