Five generations of his family have labored as fishermen. The sea is as important to him as air itself. My whole family depends on the sea my father, my brothers, my wife, my children. Yet Dieng's father, Djibe Ndiaye, does not know if his five grandsons will say the same thing. So they will have to try doing something else, and that will be very difficult.
Families eat fish several times a day.
Some schools get their ink for pens from cuttle fish. Shark vertebrae are fashioned into necklaces for tourists, and dried, gutted moonfish become lamps. Seaside sand is mixed with cement for bricks. Rocks from the beach form foundations for houses. By late afternoon, as dozens of fishing boats return to shore, the beach is a sweaty, noisy, teeming place, where a smothering stench raw fish catches in clothes and in pores.