Spices and Tastes of Senegal's Biggest Fish Market

M'BOUR, Senegal, Feb. 26, 2009— -- Senegal survives thanks to a few industries, one of which is fishing.

One of Senegal's biggest fish markets is in M'Bour, settled on a beach, facing the Atlantic Ocean.

Thousands of people flock to M'Bour every day to buy one of the best-quality fish in the country.

The place is crammed, and smelly.

Maodou, a guide who has lived and worked all his life in M'Bour, proudly showed off a shell which they call the local Camembert cheese, left to rot under the sun for three days before its eaten.

"The more rotten it is, the better," Maodou said recently of the soft shell.

"Look, it's still alive," he added, touching the decaying grayish shell with his finger to make sure that it was still moving.

As for Senegal's fish, there is tough competition to catch it.

Some fishermen travel all the way from Asia, thousands of miles away, to get to M'Bour.

But local fishermen, with their small wooden boats, called pirogues, still manage to catch some of the good fish such as red fish and rascal.

This rare fish is snatched right away and sent to Europe and Asia.

Walking between pans of sizzling octopus and women grinding fish, Maodou pointed to an elderly fisherman, squatting on the sand, who was cutting shark fins.

"This is for the Japanese," he said. "They think it's an aphrodisiac."

The rare species are sold by the "mareyeurs." They have their own space on the upper part of the market, with a concrete floor and a solid roof to protect them from the sun. The mareyeurs pack red fish and rascals in polystyrene boxes with ice and load them into air-conditioned trucks.

The local market is left with more common fish, such as herring, hawked by traders known as banabana. The luckiest of the banabana run tiny stands on the beach made of wood and plastic, while the others spread a cloth on the sand and put their fish on it.

Some of M'Bour's herring is actually cooked and sold right on the spot, for less than a dollar.