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Hundreds of fish fillets sun-drying on the pebble shoreline near Kismayo
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Field report · Catch · Process · Cure · Store

From sea to storage.

A field report on what comes off our boats — from the morning catch on the Jubaland coast, through hand-processing and sun-curing, to export-ready cold storage.

  • 01
    Caught
  • 02
    Landed
  • 03
    Processed
  • 04
    Cured
  • 05
    Stored
Chapter 01 — Caught

It starts with our boats.

Every fillet on this page begins as a fish hauled aboard a Sommarine vessel off the Jubaland coast. Our fleet — built and serviced at our own Kismayo boatyard — works the inshore and offshore grounds with crews trained for long, hard days at sea.

Fresh kingfish fillets piled inside a Sommarine cold room, ready for processing
Chapter 02 — Landed

What the boats bring back.

Shark, kingfish, grouper, marlin — the species change with the season and the grounds. Some go straight into ice and out to market; others are set aside for the salting and drying yards along the coast.

Whole sharks landed on a steel butchery rack inside a Sommarine processing room
Top-down view of a single fish drying on a mesh rack above the gravelFrozen white fillets dusted with ice crystals, ready for cold storageSculptural stack of cured-fish bales, packed and ready to ship
Chapter 03 — Processed

Filleted by hand, on the same coast.

The catch is brought ashore the same day, butterflied open along the spine, cleaned and salted by hand. No machines, no shortcuts — the kind of careful work that determines how the fish will dry, store and taste months from now.

Close-up of butterflied, salt-cured fish fillets in deep amber tones
Stack of freshly filleted fish on a processing board
Chapter 04 — Cured

Sun-cured, the way it's always been done.

The fillets are laid out on raised wooden racks above the pebble beach, where the dry coastal wind and the Indian Ocean sun do most of the work. Days, not hours. The result is a deeply flavoured, shelf-stable product valued across the region.

Fish fillets laid out to dry on raised wooden racks above the pebble shore
Fillets drying on mesh and timber racksBundle of dried fish, layered for transportCured fillets stacked together, showing dried textureDetailed view of dried fish skin and flesh, ready to be packed
Chapter 05 — Stored

Cold-stored, export-ready.

The finished product is packed into our cold storage — built for volume and for the long shipping windows of regional and international trade. Traceable from boat to box, kept at temperature until it leaves the yard.

Sommarine cold-storage warehouse stacked with cartons of finished product, with a forklift moving a pallet
A complete chain

From the boats we build, to the boxes we ship.

Sommarine is one of the few operators on this coast that owns every link of the chain — the yard, the fleet, the processing, the storage. That's how we keep quality consistent, and value here on the Somali coast.

Talk to our team