The primary means of earning a living for the people of Ganvie is fishing. Their fishing is primarily small-scale fishing done on a low-capital and low technology basis.

Most fishing is done by individual fisherman. The only fishing that we saw was by using nets. We saw throw nets, basket nets, and larger netted areas.

They fish for about 30 of the 78 different species of fish that live in Lake Nokoue'. They also catch shrimp, crabs, oysters, and mussels.

However, about 85 percent of the fish caught are in the Cichlid, Clupeidae, and Penaeidae families of fish. I'm not familiar with any of these fish.

Fish are then often taken into town and sold, allowing Ganvie residents to purchase other goods to bring back to Ganvie to sell to others. This is their economy.

And while fishing being the primary aspect of their economy makes perfect sense to me, I'm not sure that I would want to eat anything caught in this lake.

You can see some of the fish baskets in the photo below. We saw groups of these at several places in the lake. I'm not sure how they work.

In the next photo, you can see that this young fellow just cast his net into the water behind his boat.

The next photo is one of many fish farming areas that we saw. These areas have opening for the small fish to swim in but then they grow and can't exit and get netted.

The next two photos are people out fishing with nets.

The last photo is in the village of Ganvie. You can see fishing nets hanging from the drying rail. We saw plenty of fishing nets being dried.