When Juan Seminario Garay, the chef and owner of the La Sirena d’ Juan and newer Sirena Café Bar in Mancora, Peru, said that his fisherman was going to El Ñuro I had to go.

Twenty-three kilometers south of Mancora on the north coast of Peru, El Ñuro is a tiny artisanal fishing village with just a few hundred people. Being near the confluence of warm equatorial waters meeting the cold Humboldt Current, the diversity of fish being caught here is incredible. It’s is not far from Cabo Blanco, the fishing village that once attracted the world’s top big game fishermen, including Ernest Hemingway, who came in the 1950’s while filming the Old Man and the Sea.

Everyone in El Ñuro works in the fishing industry. Most of the men go out in the morning and they come back in the afternoon with the fish, which everyone else cleans on the pier. Hundreds of pelicans and sea turtles swirl in the turquoise water waiting for scraps. There’s wahoo, merluza, marlin, and numerous types of tuna –  the best tuna anywhere in Peru. It gets packed into plastic crates and on to palettes that are then carted off onto trucks where it is shipped off to Chiclayo and to Lima and beyond.

In the early afternoon the pier is at its busiest. This is the scene.

Nicholas Gill (470 Posts)

Writer and photographer Nicholas Gill is the editor/publisher of New World Review. He lives in Lima, Peru and Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CondeNast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler, Afar, and Penthouse. Visit his personal website (nicholas-gill.com) for more information.