World Heritage Site

Like the Omo Valley, people visit the Saloum Delta mostly for A (birding) while it is inscribed for B (the tradition of shellfish gathering and the historical shell mounds). Fortunately, unlike Omo, Saloum is well-documented, with clear maps. The place to start your boat journey is the laidback town of Toubakouta, which lies conveniently close to the Gambian border if you have plans for an onward journey. The town can also be reached from Dakar or even Saint-Louis within a day.

My B&B offered a ‘menu’ of no less than 24 tours and other activities, but my eyes already stopped at #2: a late afternoon boat trip to L’île aux coquillages. So at 4.30 pm, boat guy Ibu and I stepped into the large wooden, motored pirogue and went out. The waters of the Saloum River tributaries are calm (though the Delta is tidal). It is a good area for fishing: one of the other guests had caught two large barracudas the other day, which we had for a delicious dinner in the evening!  

Close to the town, you can see wooden racks standing in the water. These hold nets for the artificial production of oysters. But the oysters also grow naturally on the roots of the mangroves, which are the predominant type of vegetation along the river banks. We saw several women collecting these molluscs during low tide. The mangroves also provide honey, which is sold by the locals to tourists.

After a short interlude at a particularly dense mangrove forest, where we surprised a marsh mongoose, we finally approached the Shellfish Mound Island of Dioron Boumak. It has an eroded shellfish beach where you can anchor, which we did, and then we stepped on land. The beach is fully comprised of heaps of tiny, empty cockles. But that’s not all: the top of the island lies at 12m, all consisting of layers of shellfish. There is a path that takes you uphill and across the island, with some steep climbs.

These shell mounds were long believed to be natural, but they were accumulated by ancient shell gatherers possibly to create some additional dry land in an area that is prone to flooding. Dioron Boumak is now thought to be at least 1500 years old and is one of the largest and best preserved archaeological shell middens of the Saloum Delta. It has several large and old baobabs on top, a symbol of its age. It has funerary mounds as well, although these are not marked. The guide pointed out the holy status of one of the oldest baobabs on top of the hill. Some findings from the island, such as a shell necklace, can be seen at the History Museum of Gorée.

I found it a very atmospheric and interesting site to visit; seeing this kind of lifestyle centered around molluscs is rare. So don’t go to any of the B-locations in this WHS where you’ll only place your foot in the core zone and see some mangroves. This shell mound boat tour is quite popular: when we were there, there were 4 other boats (including one with 20 Polish tourists and their entourage, all in the same-sized boat as me on my own) but my boat guide said that sometimes there are even 15 boats at the same time. They all follow the same route, so mangroves – shellfish mound and then ending at sunset at a particular patch of mangrove forest where loads of birds fly in to sleep at night.