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Despite the EU's stated policy of sustainable fishing, the fishermen of Senegal say the insatiable appetite of the trawlers are decimating the sardine population.
In a cruel and twisted irony, many of the sardines caught by the trawlers are processed and canned on Las Palmas in the Canary islands, before being shipped back to within a few miles of where they were originally caught and sold on the local stalls.
On board the Joola the lookout finally raised his arm to signal he had spotted a dark stain on the surface of the ocean. As the pirogue got closer to the shoal, the men began to pay out the nets while the captain turned hard on the tiller, circling the fish until they were completely surrounded by the nets.
On a signal, the four youngest members of the crew, aged between seven and 10, leapt into the water and began splashing around for all they were worth. The men on board banged the side of the boat and shouted at the water, trying to scare the fish away from their escape route beneath them.
As the men began pulling on the nets the boat tipped almost to vertical and water splashed over the gunwales, filling the bottom of the pirogue. Hauling on the ropes, the circle of net became smaller and smaller.
Eventually, all that was left was a small circle of netting. But when the men pulled it over the side it contained little more than a handful of sardines, two octopuses and a squid.
After four more punishing hours at sea the men of the Joola finally hauled in a net full of fish, and the boat reverberated with the sound of flapping sardines.
But as the pirogue arrived at the beach and a seething mass of merchants bid for the catch, the captain was not happy. "It was not enough," he said with a shrug of his shoulders and a disconsolate look at the fish.
There appears to be no solution to the problem of Africa's dwindling fish stocks. The Centre of Research for the Development of Intermediary Fishing Technologies (Credetip), a non-governmental organisation set up to protect the rights of artisan fishermen throughout west Africa, wants to see the west African coastal countries adopt a common policy to fishing agreements.
Youssoupha Gueye, the director of Credetip in Dakar, believes the only way to protect one of the continent's most important resources is for the countries to work together to insure stocks remain at sustainable levels.
But for the governments of the region, ending the fishing agreements with the EU and other countries is not an option. Senegal is indebted to the world bank to the tune of $3.8bn and the money from the fishing contracts are a vital source of hard currency. Last year Senegal spent $323m servicing its debts - $311m more than the EU pays to plunder one of the country's only natural resources.
The internal pressures on the fish stocks have grown astronomically in the last decade. A prolonged drought in the Sahel region has forced large swathes of the population to migrate to the coast in search of food and work. When they cannot find jobs in the seething metropolis of Dakar, many try their hand at fishing, increasing to breaking point the pressure on fish stocks.
"The fishing agreements are a short term solution to a long term problem," Mr Gueye said. "In Senegal we have a saying: it is better to learn how to catch a fish than to be given a fish every day. At the moment the EU just gives us a fish."
Arona Diagne wants to see the fishing agreements ended indefinitely before the way of life that has provided for his family for generations disappears. "Fishing is in our blood. If we have no fish how can we survive," he said.
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