Fishers’ Tales is an arts-based storytelling project that collects the wondrous tales that fishers enjoy telling about their ocean adventures. Each story is accompanied by a unique artwork. The stories and accompanying artwork seek to highlight the similarities and differences in fishers’ engagements with the ocean from subsistence to recreational, provoking reflection, empathy and dialogue. In this sense, the project hopes to build both awareness and solidarity with subsistence and small-scale fishers, who have enormous knowledge and care for the ocean that sustains them. Fishers story, their observations and the meaning that the ocean holds for them has a lot to offer ocean governance in South Africa and should be an important part of decision-making processes.
The project contributes towards a bigger One Ocean Hub project for inclusive and transformative approaches to ocean governance. The project is managed by the Urban Futures Centre in partnership with the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), and it is funded through the Deep Emotional Engagement Programme (DEEP) Fund (administered by the One Ocean Hub programme).