Ocean Matriarchs
The hidden half of small-scale fisheries
Across the world’s tropical coastlines, communities sustain livelihoods and food security through small-scale fisheries, often using practices rooted in generations of local knowledge.
Through their stewardship, they also play a vital role in protecting shorelines from climate impacts, safeguarding critical blue carbon ecosystems, and supporting social stability in regions facing increasing environmental and economic pressures.
Central to every one of these communities are women. Through their longstanding roles as peace builders, social advocates, caregivers and resource managers, women underpin the lives and livelihoods of coastal communities everywhere.
One in every 12 people globally – nearly half of them women – depend at least partly on small-scale fishing for their livelihood, and women play vital roles in the chain: catching, processing, trading, and sustaining household economies. However their perspectives and priorities are frequently excluded from local governance, their involvement not recognised in official statistics, and their contribution not accounted for in economic flow.
Yet we know that when women hold leadership roles in community governance, development is more successful, relevant, and equitable.
And that when women are involved in local planning, community resilience to climate impacts and resource degradation improves.
Here we meet a group of women fishers - Ocean Matriarchs - separated by distance, but connected by experience, ambition and innovation. They are mothers, grandmothers, community midwives, advocates, treasurers, business women, leaders. All working toward a shared goal of securing the recognition, inclusion and remuneration owed to women small-scale fishers everywhere.
DIABA DIOP
SENEGAL
Along Senegal’s coastline, the day begins early. Wooden pirogues line the shore, returning with the morning catch. Women gather along the landing sites, basins in hand, waiting as fish are carried in, sorted, and sold. Fires burn steadily nearby, where others begin the long process of smoking and preserving fish for the market. The work is constant, and it centres around the tide.
This is where Diaba Diop’s story unfolds.
Diaba is the president of the Network of Women in Artisanal Fisheries of Senegal. Her role moves between the landing sites and meeting rooms. She represents women working across the sector, advocating for their concerns to be recognised and for their inclusion in decision-making.
Her connection to this work began long before she took on leadership. As a child, she spent school holidays alongside her grandmother at the landing sites.
Everything in her work comes back to the ocean. “It is our source of life,” Diaba says. For women working in fisheries, the sea is both a workplace and an income source. “The oceans are our offices. That’s where we go to earn our salary.” The ability to earn, support families, and cover daily needs depends directly on what the ocean provides.
Women play a central role in this system, even if it is not always recognised. Along the value chain, their work connects directly with that of fishers. “If there are no women processors, who is going to buy their product?” she asks. “We, as women, play a very important role.”
Despite this, women’s voices are often missing from decision-making spaces. “We are marginalised,” she says. In key governance bodies, representation remains limited. “You will not see any women there.” This lack of inclusion is one of the core challenges Diaba continues to address. “Women must be integrated into decision-making bodies,” she insists.
“As long as there is hope, we continue to fight, [and] as long as there are fish in the sea, we live.”
AMINA KOMORA
KENYA
Amina Komora steps skillfully amongst the mudflats and mangrove forests of Mkunumbi ward in southern Lamu County, Kenya, searching for whelks to take as bait to the community landing site, around five kilometers away.
“I learned fishing by watching my mother,” says Amina, “and we used to go together until she passed on. I’ve kept at it, even now that I’m old, and I do this work with my grandchildren.”
In the Sanye community, fishing knowledge and traditions are passed down through generations. Here, women like Amina are challenging the perception of fishing as a traditionally male occupation and carving out their own place within coastal livelihoods.
“Since the olden days, Sanye women have always been known as fishers”, Amina explains, “ [We] have become famous for fishing just like the men do, and now a landing site is named after us – ‘Bandari ya Wasanye’ – the landing site of the Sanye.”
“Yet we have faced many challenges as Sanye women. We remained unrecognised as fishers for years, even when we registered ourselves. Our names were often struck from lists of beneficiaries for development funds. But we persist, working to change this,” she says.
“We’ve been marginalised for a long time. We’ve been looked down upon, made to seem like we can’t stand up for ourselves. We are from the Sanye community, and we are fishermen, but we are yet to be known. We have been side-lined, and it is not because we are not fishers, we are. We want to be recognised as legal fishers and not forced to hide in alleys. If we’re caught fishing, we want to have permits.”
KOKOLY
MADAGASCAR
"Kokoly gets things done”, friends say of the diminutive fisherwoman. “She’s number one, there’s no one like her.”
When the tide is low on the Lamboara shoreline, Madame Kokoly tends her seaweed lines between fishing trips. “God didn’t make me to sleep during the day,” she says. “I have to keep working and doing something”.
Kokoly is a member of the Vezo community, a semi-nomadic seafaring people whose way of life depends on the ocean – ‘vezo’ loosely translates as 'to live with the sea'.
When she’s not out at sea, Kokoly is salting fish, processing sea cucumbers or gathering tree resin in the forest (a traditional sealant for wooden outrigger canoes).
Kokoly has always challenged traditional norms, “My father and grandfather knew how to do it all,” says Kokoly. “They built big boats. [And] even though we were girls, we wanted to play with toy boats. So they built us a boat to play with. And there I was, building boats”.
Today, Madame Kokoly is one of only a small number of women who free dive for octopus. “Before, when there were a lot of octopus, nobody could catch one like her. She was always the best.”
“There’s nothing she can’t do. She knows everything about the ocean.”
Diaba, Amina and Kokoly are part of a growing movement of Ocean Matriarchs: women proving their value as fishers, and helping reshape ocean protection and governance at the same time.
Governments and decision-makers should not only acknowledge their roles, but actively engage with them, learn from their lived experience, and support community-led marine management that is inclusive, equitable, and locally driven.
And we as partners and allies must continue telling these stories to better reflect the realities, knowledge, and rights of the communities most connected to the sea.
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Images used in this story are the copyright of Blue Ventures/Rewild/Garth Cripps/Randall Mabwa
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