Overfishing threatens way of life in Bahamas

Tereha Davis, whose family has fished for conch from waters around the Bahamas for five generations, remembers when she could walk into the water from the beach and pick up the marine snails from the seabed.

But in recent years, Davis, 49, and conch fishers like her have had to go farther and farther from shore, sometimes as far as 30 miles (48 kilometers), to find the mollusks that Bahamians eat fried, stewed, smoked and raw and are a pillar of the island nation's economy and tourism industry.

Scientists, international conservationists and government officials have sounded the alarm that the conch population is fading due to overfishing, and a food central to Bahamians' diet and identity could cease to be commercially viable in as little as six years.

"When I was a child, we never had to go that far to get conch," said Davis, speaking at a Freeport market where she sold her catch. "Without conch, what are we supposed to do?"
Conch's potential demise reflects the threat overfishing poses around the world to traditional foods. Such losses are among the starkest examples of how overfishing has changed people's lives, how they work, what they eat, how they define themselves.

The overfishing challenges faced by Bahamians are mirrored in places as disparate as Senegal, where overfishing has taken away white grouper, long the basis for the national dish of thieboudienne, and the Philippines, where it has depleted small fish such as sardines that are used in kinilaw, a raw dish similar to ceviche.
No longer a theoretical threat, overfishing has wiped out once abundant species and taken off the table forever beloved culturally important dishes. And it's a worsening problem - the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has...