A woman of Dassilame Serere inspects a cord with oysters suspended from it in the Saloum Delta, Senegal.
Photo illustration: 731; Photographer: Ricci Shryock for Bloomberg Green
How Oyster Growers Use Mangroves to Fend Off West Africa’s Rising Seas
On the coast of Senegal, villagers are restoring dense forests to slow land loss and adapting how they raise oysters in the process.
Waist-deep in brown water, Maria Ndong inspects a cord with rugged oysters clinging to it just below the surface. She raises a knife and cuts the string, slick with algae, measuring her catch before flinging it onto the deck of a nearby boat.
As recently as a decade ago, the oysters would have been stuck to the roots of the dense mangroves that cover this corner of southern Senegal’s roughly 5,000-square-kilometer Saloum Delta. Then, Ndong and the other women of her village, Dassilame Serere, would have cut the tree itself to harvest the mollusks that are their livelihood.