- In Shimoni, Kenya, a new fishing port is slated to open in June.
- While the government promises local people opportunities for jobs and businesses once operations start, some residents foresee more harm than good from the port.
- Some conservation activities — including seagrass, coral and mangrove restoration projects as well as fishing, seaweed farming and tourism operations — have already suffered during the port’s construction phase, which began in 2022, local people say. They fear it may get worse once the port opens, especially if planned dredging proceeds.
- A county government official said Kwale county is monitoring the situation and pledged to mitigate any impacts and safeguard fishing activities and conservation efforts.
This is Mongabay’s first story in a short series about the new Shimoni Fish Port. Read the second story here.
SHIMONI, Kenya — Behind the gates of a small, forested property by the sea in Shimoni, a town on Kenya’s south coast, preparation for coral restoration was underway one afternoon in March. One part of the compound was strewn with concrete sinkers, steel and plastic cages and mounting blocks. Young men and women took advantage of the shade to work protected from the unforgiving coastal sun. They were building artificial reef structures to hold baby corals that they would soon outplant into the sea nearby, part of a project led by a local branch of the Dutch NGO REEFolution. Since 2018, the project has placed 3,600 artificial reef structures to restore coral reefs on more than 5,000 square meters (54,000 square feet) of the Wasini Channel.
A short distance west of the REEFolution compound, also right on Wasini Channel, a new fishing port is taking shape. Its large blue and white buildings dominate the landscape. A new jetty dwarfs the existing one used by local fishers. Soon, residents will start seeing huge international fishing vessels docking at the port. The port project, which has been supported by President William Ruto, cost the government 2.6 billion Kenyan shillings ($20 million) and is slated for completion in June.
While the government promises local people opportunities for jobs and businesses once operations start, some residents foresee more harm than good from the port. Conservation activities and livelihoods have already suffered during the construction phase, which began in 2022, and they fear it may get worse once the port opens.
There was “direct destruction of coral colonies and seagrass meadows on the construction site,” Ewout Knoester, a lead scientist at REEFolution, told Mongabay in an email. But so far, corals in the wider area, including at REEFolution’s restoration site, appear to have been more affected by the marine heat wave in 2024 than they were by the poor water quality the port construction contributed to. “I do worry if they actually start dredging … that the surviving corals in the wider area will be much more impacted,” Knoester said, referring to a plan to dig a ship channel for the port that has yet to materialize. He added that “it depends on the scale and duration of dredging, and the precautions taken (such as bubble screens) – if any.”
In a statement sent to Mongabay, the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) said the port project includes a modern jetty, a fish landing site, a cold storage facility and ice-making plant, a warehouse to hold a fish processing plant, a fish meal plant and other support amenities. “There has been no notable challenge with the locals since there has been community participation before and during execution of the project,” the statement said. The KPA did not respond to Mongabay’s follow-up questions about concerns expressed by community members.
Roman Sherah, the county executive committee member for agriculture, livestock and fisheries in Kwale county, where Shimoni is located, said he agrees with the KPA about the port’s benefits. “The port will improve access of local fishers to regional and international markets for fish products,” Sherah told Mongabay via email. “Cold storage and processing facilities will reduce post-harvest losses and increase fishers’ income and employment in port operations, transport, and fish processing will create alternative livelihoods.”
However, Sherah also acknowledged negative impacts of the port that would emerge when it starts operations. He told Mongabay via email that pollution from ships and port activities “may lead to declining fish populations,” and that “construction, dredging could destroy coral reefs and local fishers may struggle to compete with better-equipped commercial fleets.”
Construction complaints
Some residents see only the downsides.
Said Ahmed, the new vice chairman of the Beach Management Unit (BMU) on Wasini Island, just across Wasini Channel from the port, is one. In Kenya, BMUs are legally recognized community organizations that bring together local people who depend on fisheries activities for their livelihoods. Many, including the Wasini BMU, manage community conservation areas, locally referred to as tengefus, Swahili for “set-aside.” The Wasini tengefu has corals and seagrass that the community has been working for years to restore as a fish nursery and tourist attraction.
Apart from being vice chairman of the BMU, Ahmed is also a data collector for the Wasini tengefu, monitoring the area twice a month. In February, he and his colleagues found the seagrass in the tengefu unhealthy and the corals bleached. He attributed both to a combination of silt from the construction of the port jetty, soil erosion from a heavy recent rainy season and high water temperatures.
“When I looked at the seagrass, they were not healthy and have changed color,” Ahmed said. “They were covered in soil and didn’t look as vibrant as they normally did before this construction started.”
The last time the community outplanted baby corals and seagrasses to the tengefu was in July 2024. Since then, they have been monitoring the situation. Since the new BMU leadership assumed office in March, they have yet to decide whether to continue with the restoration given the current unfavorable environmental conditions.
Loud hammering during the construction of the jetty, in addition to the silt, scared away fish, according to local fishers. Most of the fishers in Wasini use basket traps and nets for fishing, either from traditional canoes or engine-powered boats or by diving to set their gear. With the construction, they initially had to move farther away to fish, which was an inconvenience. Now, they’ve returned to fishing nearby, but the catch is lower than it was before construction began, according to Ahmed.
Before the construction of the port started, Rashid Mohamed Rashid, a fisherman from Wasini, told Mongabay he could catch 6-8 kilograms (13-18 pounds) of fish per day, but no longer. “I now catch between 2 and 3 kilos of fish and this earns me between 600 and 1,200 shillings,” Rashid said. (That’s 2.2-6.6 lbs of fish for $4.60-$9.30.) Rashid is one of 155 fishers in the Wasini BMU; the other 109 members are fishmongers and boat operators.
Feisal Abdalla and his wife, Amina Sabel, run an eco-lodge on Wasini Island, where for the past three years they’ve had a front-row seat to the fishing port’s unfolding development, right across the channel from their lodge.
According to the couple, before construction started, the government promised it would be conducted only during the day. In actuality, they said, the work happened day and night. Wasini Channel is renowned for dolphin watching, with bottlenose (genus Tursiops) and Indo-Pacific humpback (Sousa chinensis) dolphins regularly swimming by, just outside Abdalla and Sabel’s eco-lodge. The racket from the jetty construction that scared away the fish scared off the dolphins too. “When they were banging and hammering, the dolphins were not coming at all here,” Abdalla said. “And when somebody was diving, you could hear the noise when you were down there.”
Hosting tourists coming to experience Wasini Island’s attractions, including the dolphins and taking them on excursions to nearby Kisite Mpunguti Marine Park & Reserve is Abdalla’s source of income. The dolphins’ disappearance therefore hurt their business.
The jetty is now complete, and the remaining construction is happening on land. However, light from three huge masts erected at the site is so bright that it affects Abdalla and Sabel’s business, their personal lives, and even the island’s wildlife. According to Abdalla, fruit bats used to land on the trees by their eco-lodge to eat berries. “We have no natural light in the evening anymore,” Sable said. “You cannot even sleep with all that light.”
Across the channel on the mainland, to the south of Shimoni, is the village of Kibuyuni. There, Fatuma Mohamed has been farming seaweed for years and is a founding member of the Kibuyuni Seaweed Farmers’ Cooperative. She described challenges with the weather, such as heavy rainfall and extreme heat, which have caused seaweed losses. And since construction of the port started, she said co-op members have lost seaweed crops a few times, due to the silt brought by waves from Shimoni to their farms in Kibuyuni.
“When the jetty was being constructed, the silt was washed all the way to Kijiweni where it destroyed all the seaweed,” she said. The silt also killed fish that a local community group had put in cages as part of an aquaculture project, and they had to start all over again.
Future concerns
Residents’ biggest concern now is that dredging will begin in the channel to allow big ships to dock at the port, as the project’s Environmental Impact Assessment indicates will occur during the second phase of the project. “Construction of the industrial port would involve dredging and dumping activities to achieve the desired draft of -8m [-26 ft] to allow berthing of target fishing vessels such as purse seiners and trawlers,” the EIA states.
Mohamed said she fears that if the dredging happens, the caged fish, the seaweed and the fishing will be disturbed all over again. Residents of Wasini, Shimoni and Kibuyuni said they’d heard the dredging may be done on the southern part of the port — right from the Wasini BMU’s tengefu all the way to near the Kibuyuni seaweed farms, potentially disrupting years of dedicated community effort. This hasn’t come to pass yet, but the government has offered no assurance that it won’t.
The project’s EIA foresaw challenges, including “the impact of dredging and dumping on the marine ecosystem, oil spills and their management, loss of livelihoods and pollution,” for which it recommended mitigation measures. For example, silt curtains that could reduce the impact of dredging. But since silt curtains weren’t used during the construction of the jetty in phase one, area residents aren’t confident any precautions will be taken in phase two.
Additionally, as the port nears completion, residents said they believe more challenges will come, including that the huge quantity of fish coming in will crush the market for their fish as well as attract unwanted predators. “Because of these big ships going to the deep sea and coming here to port, we believe that sharks may follow them here … which will be dangerous to us,” Rashid said.
They also expressed concern that their conservation efforts — the tengefu, the REEFolution coral restoration, mangrove and seagrass restoration projects — may be stopped altogether. “Of course, you can’t tell ships to avoid some places where we have set aside for conservation, or not to spill oil,” Ali Issa, an interim committee member of the Shimoni BMU, told Mongabay. “They will spill oil and there will be no fish left. The conservation areas will be destroyed.”
Meanwhile, Abdalla and Sable said their future in Wasini is uncertain due to the port’s impact on their business. “Very, very dark,” is how Sable put it. “We are thinking very, very hard what we can do with our life business-wise, because we cannot rely on it here. You don’t know what is happening, you don’t know how extreme it will be. Definitely we don’t invest anymore because we don’t know if it’s worthwhile, and we are really scratching our brains,” Sable said.
According to Sherah, the Kwale county government has information about the effects of the port construction but has yet to conduct an assessment to verify their extent. He said the county government is monitoring the situation and remains open to engaging with affected stakeholders.
“If significant negative effects are confirmed, we will work with relevant agencies and developers to mitigate the impact and ensure that both fishing activities and marine conservation efforts are safeguarded,” he said.
Banner image: A fisherman shows one of his catch in Wasini, 2021. Image by Anthony Langat for Mongabay.
Kenya port and ship-breaking projects threaten livelihoods and environment
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