Kerkennah. Hela Kaoual/Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.Kerkennah is a group of islands lying off the east coast of Tunisia in the Gulf of Gabès, around 20km away from the mainland city of Sfax. The two main islands are Chergui and Gharbi (Eastern and Western in Arabic). Approaching the islands by ferry, one is struck by a very curious view: the waters seem to be divided into many parcels (in fact they are) by lines made of thousands of palm tree leaves. This is what Kerkennis call charfia, a centuries-old traditional fishing method that was ingeniously designed to lure fish into a capture chamber where they are later recovered.
As the land is arid, agriculture activities are limited to subsistence farming. This means that fishing is one of the key economic activities on the archipelago. Octopus are particularly emblematic of the islands, and are captured from the end of October until the end of April using another Kerkennian method: the use of jar-shaped receptacles.
Local communities continue to bear the externalised social and environmental costs of this industry.
