Limbe Beach:
The beach that never lacked fish now has nothing
By Carine Christine Kemeni, UB Journalism Student on internship
For the past months, Down Beach Dockyard in Limbe has had very little fish. This beach never lacked fish before. But now, the place is quiet. The boats are on the sand and the fishermen have empty nets.
When you visit with the hope of buying fresh fish, you get elated, as you see many boats on the beach. But as you get closer your hope is turned into despair as nearly all the boats are empty with fishermen standing by looking forlorn. The ground is wet and full of mud. The sea is there, but the boats are not going out to catch fish. Women who used to buy fish are also not many.
“We have seen little fish before, but not like this,” one fisherman said. “These past months have been very bad. We go to the sea and come back with nothing.”
Down Beach Dockyard has always given fish to people in Limbe, Buea and nearby towns. Every day, women come to buy fresh fish. They smoke it and sell it in the market. Restaurants also buy fish here to cook food. Children eat fish from this beach.
But now things have changed. Fish is hard to find. When there is fish, the price is very high. Sometimes there is no fish at all. Buyers wait for a long time and go home with nothing.
Fishermen say there are three big problems.
First is the weather. In the past months, the rain has been too much and too heavy. The wind is strong. The sea is very rough. Many boats could not go far. Some nets broke.
The second problem they say is overfishing. Fishermen say “big boats come close to the shore. These big boats catch too much fish. When we go with our small boats, there is no fish left,” a fisherman said.
Third is dirt. After the floods, there was a lot of waste on the beach. Mud and trash covered parts of the shore. This made it hard for fish to come and lay eggs.
Life is hard for everyone now. Fishermen cannot feed their families well. They cannot pay school fees. Women who sell smoked fish have no fish to sell. They sit at the market and wait.
“I have sold fish here for many years,” a woman said. “I have never seen months like this. Some days I don’t sell anything.”
Buyers are now buying frozen fish from town. But it is expensive. And it does not taste like fresh fish from the beach.
People in the community are asking for help. They want the government to stop big boats from fishing close to the shore. They want help to clean the beach. They also want new nets and tools for fishing.
For now, the fishermen still wake up early. They still go to the sea with hope. They pray that the fish will come back soon.
An elder in the community said, “The sea has fed us for a long time. We believe it will feed us again.”
Down Beach Dockyard is going through hard months. But the people have not given up. They are waiting for the day when the boats will come back full of fish, and the beach will be busy again like before.
