Oct. 21, 2026

Whose Dinner Becomes Fish Feed?

On May 22, 2017, the people of Gunjur in The Gambia woke up to a red lagoon. Dead fish floated on the surface of the Bolong Fenyo, the centrepiece of a nature reserve the community had protected for nearly a decade. Investigators traced the pollution to Golden Lead, a Chinese-owned fishmeal plant operating on the edge of the reserve.

Gunjur’s lagoon is the starting point for a question every seafood eater should ask: whose dinner is becoming fish feed?

Follow the feed

It’s easy to assume a problem in West Africa has nothing to do with a salmon fillet in Toronto, London or Sydney. Feed is the connection. Farmed salmon eat pellets made partly from fishmeal and fish oil, and some of that comes from small, oily fish caught along the coasts of Mauritania, Senegal and The Gambia.

Those fish are sardinella and bonga. Industry sometimes calls them “trash fish,” as though nobody would miss them. In Senegal, fish covers around 70% of the population’s animal protein needs. In The Gambia it is more than half. The people eating these fish notice when they disappear.

When a buyer takes every fish

Fatou Samba leads the women fish processors in Bargny, a coastal town outside Dakar. For generations, women like her bought fish on the beach, smoked and dried it, and sold it across the region. That’s how sardinella reached family tables.

Speaking to The Outlaw Ocean Project, she described how having three meals a day has become a struggle, and how families now think about survival instead of savings [VERIFY quote]. Fish prices in Senegal more than doubled between 2019 and 2025, and the number of women processing fish in her area dropped from more than 300 to about 70 [VERIFY].

Before the plants arrived, a full market acted as a natural brake. If nobody could buy more fish, fishers stopped bringing it in. Fishmeal plants buy unlimited volumes, so there is now a buyer for every last fish, and the plants outbid the women. Both sardinella species in the region are now considered at risk of collapse.

Where the oil goes

In October 2022, a tanker loaded tens of thousands of tons of fish oil in Nouadhibou, Mauritania, and sailed more than 3,000 miles to Norway for Mowi, the world’s largest salmon farmer [VERIFY vessel name, date and tonnage]. Reporting linked that trade to rising sardinella prices that left local families unable to afford a traditional staple.

The bigger picture backs this up. A 2026 study in PNAS found that most internationally traded fishmeal comes from nutritionally vulnerable countries. Keeping that catch at home could meet the nutritional needs of up to 31 million undernourished people. A separate analysis estimated that the West African fish behind Norwegian salmon feed could have fed between 2.5 and 4 million people.

Living next door

More than 9.5 million people worldwide live within a mile of a fishmeal plant, including nearly 1.7 million children. The smell comes mainly from trimethylamine, a gas that at industrial levels can cause headaches, nausea and irritation. Some plants have dumped wastewater into lagoons and onto beaches. That’s what turned Gunjur’s lagoon red.

When the fish disappear, people leave

Content note: this section discusses deaths at sea.

Researchers name collapsing fish stocks as one of several factors, alongside climate change and economic hardship, that push people to migrate. Pape Demba Sy was a skilled fisher in Senegal who supplied sardinella to the women processors. As his nets came back empty more often, he tried to reach Spain’s Canary Islands by boat, carrying 50 euros and a photo of his parents. By 2011 he had tried nine times, and people called him “Nine Times” [VERIFY].

In 2025, the migrant rights group Caminando Fronteras recorded 1,906 deaths on the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands.

The village that said no

In April 2018, a fishmeal plant opened in Abéné, a small town in southern Senegal. Residents soon reported a heavy stench, thick black smoke, and untreated wastewater running into rice fields and wells. Youth groups and local activists organized protests and petitions and held outdoor screenings of a documentary about the industry. A community vote followed, and in July 2018 the plant was suspended. Abéné had no special powers. It used every tool it had.

Other communities have pushed too. Kayar, also in Senegal, banned wastewater discharges in January 2023 [VERIFY], and a Peruvian scientist built a trimethylamine monitor for a few hundred dollars [VERIFY]. Mowi says it has sourced no raw materials from Mauritania since September 2023, and Skretting Norway says it bought no fish oil from Africa in 2023 or 2024.

What you can do in two minutes

Your farmed salmon is one meal. Somewhere along its supply chain, other families may be losing theirs. Guilt won’t help them. Questions will.

Send one email to the brand of farmed salmon or shrimp you buy, or to the retailer that sells it. Ask: Does your feed contain fishmeal or fish oil from West Africa? You can ask Seafood Watch and the Marine Stewardship Council how they account for feed sourcing too. Treat them as allies. If the answer is no, thank them. If it’s yes, they now know customers are paying attention.

Gunjur, Bargny and Abéné spoke up from one end of the supply chain. Pressure from the other end is how fish stay home.

Takeaways

Small pelagic fish like sardinella and bonga are staple protein in Senegal and The Gambia
Fishmeal plants buy unlimited volumes, outbid women processors, and push prices up
Up to 31 million undernourished people could meet their nutritional needs if traded fishmeal catch stayed home (PNAS, 2026)
More than 9.5 million people live within a mile of a fishmeal plant
Abéné suspended its fishmeal plant within three months through protests and a community vote
Mowi and Skretting Norway say they stopped buying West African fish oil in 2023
Ask your seafood brand: does your feed contain West African fishmeal or fish oil?

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