Fatima Hamdi, 66, gazes at the ceiling of her modest home with a
smile deepening the lines on her face. She remembers the early
days of her work harvesting Clam—more than four decades ago.
Fatima lives in Ajim, on the island of Djerba in southeastern
Tunisia.
Each day, she and her fellow harvesters embark on long treks to
the shores of Guellala in search of clams, known locally as
"El-Qafala." Their journey is grueling, often undertaken on foot
or crammed into the backs of trucks, and sometimes even by sea in
small boats. The clam season runs from autumn until late spring,
but there are no guarantees—some days, they return home
empty-handed.
Once they reach the harvesting sites , the hard work begins. The
women spend hours walking in the water, backs bent, scanning the
seabed for signs of clams. “You can see where they are buried in
the sand,” Fatima explains. “We use a sickle to pull them out and
drop them into buckets.”
In Tunisia, clam harvesting is a profession almost exclusively
undertaken by women—a practice known as "fishing on foot." It is
exhausting with unpredictable work hours. Many women bring their
children along, navigating the harsh conditions with infants
strapped to their backs.
“I used to carry my children with me,” Fatima recalls. “The cloth
I wrapped them in would leave deep marks on my body.” She pauses
before adding, “One of my sons was barely forty days old when I
first took him with me.”
For decades, the clams she harvested provided just enough to keep
her family afloat—covering school fees, putting food on the table,
and paying for daily necessities. Clam production in Tunisia has
declined in recent years, a consequence of shifts in the marine
environment—changes that trace their roots back over a century.
In 1859, the Suez Canal project in Egypt began, creating a link
between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Thus, it paved the way
for more than a thousand species native to the Red Sea to migrate
and settle in the eastern Mediterranean.
Among those species was the blue swimming crab, which made its way
from the Indian Ocean to the western Mediterranean via the Red
Sea. It first appeared in the Gulf of Gabès in 2014, spotted in
local fishermen’s nets. Another species of blue crab is thought to
have arrived via the ballast water of passing ships.
Over time, the blue crab population has exploded, invading the
coastal waters and preying on the clams that provide a livelihood
for thousands of women in Tunisia’s coastal regions.
