Kerkennah is a Tunisian archipelago of two main islands, Gharbi and Chergui, off the coast of Sfax, reached by ferry in around an hour. Flat and bare, it lives to the rhythm of the sea: charfia fishing, listed since 2020 as part of Unesco's intangible heritage, sponge fishing, and scattered palm trees. The villages of Mellita and Remla provide the only relief in the landscape.
How does Kerkennah welcome you right from the crossing?
Charfia fishing, however, carries a rare distinction: it has been inscribed since 2020 on Unesco's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The moment the ferry leaves the port of Sfax, time shifts gear. Reckon on some twenty kilometres of sea and about an hour's crossing: enough to leave the city behind and feel Kerkennah drawing near, flat and understated on the horizon. Mellita, the first village along the way, greets you gently, before Remla, the archipelago's main town.
The archipelago then reveals itself in all its simplicity: two main islands, Gharbi and Chergui, set upon a calm Mediterranean, with no relief to break the horizon. The palm tree, Kerkennah's emblematic tree, punctuates the landscape in scattered clumps. Water and good soil are scarce here, and its dates mostly feed the livestock. This bareness has its own charm, and within the first few steps, you sense you've entered another world.
Why does charfia fishing make Kerkennah unique?
In Kerkennah, two kinds of fishing speak to the same devotion to the sea. Sponge fishing is traditionally practised on foot over the shallows or by diving, a know-how now under strain from overexploited stocks. Charfia fishing, however, carries a rare distinction: it has been inscribed since 2020 on Unesco's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It is a craft that continues to be passed down.
According to Unesco, charfia is a traditional, passive technique that makes the most of hydrographic conditions, the contours of the seabed and the sea's own resources. It is this way of fishing with the sea, rather than against it, that makes charfia a living heritage, recognised by Unesco.
What faces have shaped the soul of the archipelago?
Before it was Kerkennah, the archipelago bore another name. Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, Livy and Plutarch tell us the Romans called it Cercina, a Libyco-Berber name inherited from a port town where ships used to anchor. Already in that name lies the island's whole history: a land turned towards the sea, a waypoint before it became a home port.
It was at El Abbasia, in the north of the island, that Farhat Hached was born on 2 February 1914, into a modest family of fishermen. This son of Kerkennah would go on to found the Tunisian General Labour Union, a figure the island claims as its own. In the spring of 2017, other faces came to settle here: the Matza artistic initiative, launched by Swiss artist Séverin Guelpa, brought together around a dozen artists from Tunisia, Switzerland, France and Belgium.
Can Kerkennah withstand the rising sea?
In Kerkennah, the sea is never far beneath your feet: most of the archipelago's land sits at less than five metres above sea level. This close bond with the water, which has always shaped the rhythm of the fishermen and their charfias, has its downside too. One night in November, violent winds were enough to push the sea over the dykes and into people's homes. A reminder that the island lives with the sea as much as it stands up to it.
Is that cause for alarm, though? That isn't Kerkennah's way. For generations, it has known how to live with the open sea's moods. But the fragility of a territory lying almost entirely at water level calls for vigilance rather than indifference. You leave the archipelago with this image in mind: a low-lying, patient land, which deserves to be cared for as much as it is admired.
From Mellita to Remla, Kerkennah offers itself up in its own slow time, between the palm trees punctuating the landscape and the sea dictating the pace of the days. Watching the charfias wait for the tide, you grasp that fishing here is still done with the sea, a gesture recognised by Unesco that the archipelago's families continue to pass on. You also think of the child of El Abbasia, who left this fishing shore to leave his mark on Tunisia's labour history. What stays with you from Kerkennah is the image of an island that has chosen the sea as its companion, and shows it to you without ever raising its voice.
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