Africa 24 news
By Hassan I. Conteh
In the midst of their nebulous hopes, the toiling up and down doesn’t stop daily as fishermen at Fishery Dockyard east of Freetown only get now little fish catch because the sun is very hot these days.
January starts too hot like the hotter days last year, 2023.
And when this happens, I mean, if the sun gets hotter and hotter between February and April, fishermen like Abubakrr Kargbo don’t get enough fish.
Kargbo says they can only get enough catch in the middle of the rainy season.
The rainy season in Sierra Leone is a period when fishermen smile but not in the dry season while only few fishmongers go to Fishery to buy fish for sale in the markets.
Fish is dear now since the hot climate is badly impacted fishing on the sea.
Even if they keep trawling and trawling away in nautical miles in the sea beyond the EEZ, exclusive economic zone, permitted area of fishing, in Sierra Leone’s waters, they get little haul of fish such as a ‘gala’ of fish only.
But few years ago, Alimamy Morlai Kamara, a former fisherman of a Chinese boat called 6608 Papa China, told Africa24 that a boat (trawler) used to make two or three gala (fish catch in quantity) a day.
Asked what has caused the drastic drop in fish catch in Sierra Leone’s waters of the Banana Island, west of Freetown, beyond the EEZ, Alimamy explained:
“The problem is particularly due to the hot-burning sun which causes fish like herring and good fish to swim below the waters in the Ocean area.
When the sun gets hotter they dive down the waters in the cold area to live.
“Since the ‘float net’ used by fishermen can’t be thrown right beneath the sea where the fish take refuge while the sun is hot, sometimes fishermen would have to return home without little catch a day.”
This situation described by Alimamy and Abubakrr clearly supports scientists’ claim that our solar system has become warmer that it will be so difficult for human beings and all living things to live on planet earth in the years to come.
To adjust to hot climatic times, it means people should now adopt new ways to live, dress, move and eat.
Those who usually eat up daily some plenty of fish must now bring that number down and save up more for other days ahead.
Quite recently, scientists, around the world, say the year 2023 is the hottest of all and 2024 will be hotter too.
The changes on our planet such as the too much of cold weather in some parts in the world; the too much hot sun, the repeated floods, the unexpected earthquakes, the exploded volcanoes, the falling of world’s glaciers etc. are linked to climate change patterns.
Sierra Leone, in 2017, was ranked the third worst country behind Bangladesh, Guinea Bissau, on the effects of climate change in the world, according to reports by Africa NDC Hub and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
And it seems for most Sierra Leoneans that our traditional weather system has experienced dramatic changes ever in history.
Lots of Sierra Leoneans have observed that rains don’t come heavier in July and in August like they used to be.
And that, they say, the sun keeps burning daily which impact is seen on plants as they grow little or withered away, on fish short in markets as little catch are made by fishermen.
As I write this news story a man was holding up a rubber litre of water to drink in the hot-burning sun in the capital Freetown on afternoon Saturday January 13, 2024.