Tunisia's fishers find new safety nets

17/09/2026

On Tunisia’s Djerba island, Fattouma Ben Chagra bends wire into the frame of a trap and sews the two pieces together.

She learned to mend fishing nets long before blue swimming crabs became an important catch in these waters. When demand for crab traps grew, she and her brother, a blacksmith, taught themselves how to make them. Neither had built one before. They tried, failed and started over more than once before finding a design that worked.

“For me, that was a real victory,” she says.

The traps sell, and so do the repairs. Fixing damaged gear costs fishers less than replacing it and helps prevent broken traps from drifting in the water and continuing to catch marine life. The work provides Fattouma with a steady income.

What it does not provide is a pension, insurance or much to fall back on if the work suddenly disappears.

“I won't lie to you: this work scares me sometimes,” she says. “Everything depends on this resource, on the crab. If it were ever to run out, to disappear, I don't know what would become of us. Like most of the women who do this work, we don't have social protection.”

Her uncertainty points to a larger question facing Tunisia's blue swimming crab fishery and its fisheries sector in general.

The country succeeded in turning the invasive blue swimming crab species into an economic opportunity. Yet many fishers and fish workers remain vulnerable when catches fall, weather keeps boats ashore, illness interrupts work or income simply fails to arrive.

The foundations for addressing that gap have been built up over two decades by the Government of Tunisia with support from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

One initiative, begun in 2001, was the FAO MedSudMed regional programme, funded by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests, that supports fisheries research, stakeholder engagement and sustainable fisheries across the Strait between Sicily and Tunis.

In Ghannouch, MedSudMed brought fishers together with scientists, authorities, civil society and other groups to help lay the foundations for a management plan for small-scale fisheries, including monitoring the arrival and expansion of the invasive blue crab that appeared in Tunisia’s waters in 1993 and proliferated enormously.

By 2014, the blue crab was causing significant damage to the fishing sector: destroying fishing nets and disrupting traditional catches. For fishers like Sassi Aleya, the arrival of the species meant longer hours at sea, damaged gear and uncertainty about future earnings. Families that depended on traditional fisheries had to adapt quickly.

President of the Groupement de développement de la pêche de Ghannouch, a local organization established with the contribution of earlier FAO initiatives, Sassi describes, “We were losing our nets and the species we usually caught, while the quantities of crabs we discarded were considerable.”

The Tunisian government, together with the fishers themselves, developed and improved fishing tools that are more selective. “We realized that we can better exploit this species,” Sassi describes. “Today, we have a circular trap specifically for blue crabs.”

A market emerged, and as demand grew, the blue crab fishery expanded. But the industry’s growth has not eliminated the economic insecurity facing many of the people who depend on it, and safety nets for this type of employment were limited due to the seasonality and often informal nature of the work.

Specifically focusing on this social protection element of fisher and fish workers’ struggles, FAO’s SocPro4Fish programme, funded by the Government of Norway, collected social and economic data, examined the feasibility of extending social protection coverage and identified barriers that can keep people outside existing systems.

For example, many fishers still have limited awareness of available programmes. Others don’t meet eligibility requirements because of the seasonal or informal nature of work in fisheries. For others still, it is the administrative difficulties related to enrollment.

Addressing these barriers, the project established an interinstitutional technical committee bringing together fisheries authorities, social protection institutions, fishers' representatives and researchers to identify pathways for extending social protection coverage in the sector to address some of these challenges. The committee acts as a platform for working out how coverage can be extended and made more responsive to fishing livelihoods.

A new FAO-led initiative, developed in partnership with California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium in the United States of America, builds on the relationships established through MedSudMed and findings from SocPro4Fish in Tunisia and expanding to the Philippines.

Drawing on this foundation, the initiative seeks to address a key gap by exploring how social protection can better support fishing households facing seasonal income fluctuations and ongoing environmental and economic shocks, including those linked to invasive species. In coordination, the Global Environment Facility-funded FishEBM MED project, carried out by the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (GFCM), is generating knowledge on the socioeconomic impact of this fishery along the value chain.

For Fattouma, the stakes are high. Her livelihood depends on the crab, but her security depends on what happens when work is no longer available.

Fishing families need a system that links sustainable fisheries management with social protection and decent work to navigate uncertainty, shocks and change. Truly resilient fisheries comprise both: a resource that lasts, and people with the security to build their future around it.