They had never seen the ocean. Then climate change made them fishermen.

Gazing out over the harbor in Port of Tanit, Mauritania, Sidna Ali Ould Ahmed remembers the first time he went fishing 13 years ago. 

“That night, I thought I would die,” he says. He was in a large wooden canoe called a pirogue. As the team began to pull up its fishing nets, the pirogue pitched sharply. Mr. Ahmed’s stomach did the same. 

Mr. Ahmed didn’t know what seasickness was – or that it probably wouldn’t kill him – because until that point he had spent his entire life hundreds of miles from the ocean, herding livestock deep in the country’s desert interior. 

“I used to spend my days looking after the cattle, eating rabbit meat for lunch, drinking fresh milk, and returning with a full belly,” Mr. Ahmed remembers. “Life was good.” 

He describes his journey from the land to the sea as “impossible.” But a deadly combination of the climate crisis and escalating political tensions on the edge of the Sahara has forced the same previously unthinkable shift onto some 30,000 other herders in Mauritania. 

They now form the backbone of the country’s burgeoning fisheries sector. With climate change expected to displace more than a billion people around the world by 2050, the experience of Mauritania’s new fishermen offers clues to protecting and supporting those obliged to adapt to radically new ways of life. 

An unprecedented migration

Alex Orenstein, a livestock mapping expert, says the transition of herders like Mr. Ahmed to the sea is completely unprecedented.  

Traditionally, he says, nomadic herders in West Africa have had an effective strategy for adapting to climatic changes: They simply moved to new pastures. But herders in Mauritania are increasingly hemmed in. 

To the east, the government in Mali is fighting Islamist insurgents. In the north, there is rising tension between Mauritania and neighboring Western Sahara. In the south, herders and farmers are in conflict, competing for increasingly scarce water on the Senegalese border. And foreign and domestic companies are converting grazing land to agriculture and carbon credits, preventing herders from using the pastures. 

Meanwhile, they are also feeling the effects of the “worst consecutive droughts ... anywhere in the Sahel” over the last two decades, explains Mr. Orenstein. 

He says herders and their livestock are resilient, but prolonged drought stresses their camels, cattle, sheep, and goats – making them more susceptible to disease and death.

That has pushed many herding families to send their grown children to the capital. There, some find jobs in shops or as taxi drivers. But for many, the most lucrative option is also the most radical – fishing. 

Mauritania, a country of 5 million in northwest Africa, is home to some of the most abundant waters in the world. The Mauritanian government has documented over 600 species of fish, 200 of which are sold commercially. 

Until the mid-20th century, however, most Mauritians considered the coastline inhospitable because of its high winds and a lack of fresh water, and there was little commercial fishing. Only when an extreme drought in 1970 transformed an area the size of Illinois into desert did the government begin to develop the fishing industry.  

Since then, the nascent sector has become an unlikely refuge for those fleeing climate change and instability. Approximately half of Mauritania’s 66,000 fishermen are former livestock herders, estimates Elimane Kane, a researcher studying fishing and natural resource economics for the Mauritanian Institute of Oceanographic Research and Fisheries.

Fishing is more lucrative than herding, says Mohamed Abdullah, an octopus fisherman in Port of Tanit who moved from the same region as Mr. Ahmed. He says he can earn up to $75 in a day, more than half the average monthly wage in Mauritania. 

But this comes at a high personal cost. 

“I miss the rain, the green plants, the mooing of the cows, and the bleating of the lambs,” says Mr. Abdullah, recalling the pleasure of eating couscous mixed with warm milk from his cows.

Intangible loss 

Cultural losses like this are taking a toll around the world – from the damage done to Venice by repeated flooding caused by rising sea levels, to a glacier retreat in the Peruvian Andes putting and end to a centuries-old practice of collecting small blocks of ice. Although these losses are, in many ways, incalculable, there is an increasing global movement to offer financial support to countries and communities that have been irreversibly damaged by the climate crisis. 

At last year’s United Nations climate conference, COP28, the world agreed to a “loss and damage” fund for this purpose, but so far, the $700 million pledged falls far short of the estimated $100 billion to $400 billion needed annually. 

Some of that money could go to Mauritania’s herders who have had to transition abruptly to new livelihoods. 

That support could take many forms, some as simple as swimming lessons for herders who have never seen the ocean before.

For his part, Mr. Ahmed has come to enjoy his new life at sea. He says his business is growing, with the help of more experienced locals. And in his free time, he spends long hours around a small coal fire, brewing cup after cup of sweet green tea and joking with his friends – many of them also herders-turned-fishermen. 

But like millions of others displaced by the climate crisis, he still yearns for home.

“I miss my life in the desert,” he says, staring out into the sea. “If I had had the chance to decide, I would have stayed there for the rest of my life.”