By Hassan Ibrahim Conteh
A swollen dead fish is trapped by the seaweed on the Aberdeen public beach in the west of Freetown. Just some meters’ walk, a bloated dog halfway burst was lying on the sand with flies swarming over the dead body.
Dead animals, drifted by the sea, are mostly seen on Sierra Leonean’s beaches with usually not enough attention given to the decomposed bodies.
In 2018, the fishing sector contributes about 10% of the country’s GDP with 80 % of protein consumed by Sierra Leoneans. But despite this growth, there has never been any official research on the causes of fishes’ deaths and the health effects caused on beach users.
There are several causes why fish die on the waters. Some of these reasons are said to account for natural and unnatural causes. Some fish die of old age, starvation, body injury, suffocation, water pollution, diseases, parasites, predates, toxic algae, severe weather, according to a study done by Virginia State University.
Often at times, the studies say, symptoms of oxygen depletion may cause abnormal depletion of fish gulping at the water surface or at the pond inlet or edges. This sometimes causes large fish to die first, but all sizes of fish would usually be affected later on.
Most often, the runoff of livestock waste and other organics, after a heavy rain, also cause fish deaths. Some fish do not only lay dead but have visible body sores, which make a serious case for a laboratory test to be carried on them in order to detect possible causes of their deaths.
But the Sierra Leone’s fisheries sector is thoroughly ill-equipped with diagnostics lab, cooling systems and drug and chemical applications effectively done to sanitize the polluted water.
In Sierra Leone, fishermen, commonly associate dead fish on waters as a possible cause of thunderstorms, especially during the rainy season. It is believed that both large and small fish frequently die in the month of October in the raining season when the country heavily experiences thunder and lightning.
The fishermen’s explanation of such a terrifying situation has never been taken seriously by senior officials of the country’s fisheries department. Although shoal of some dead fish could be seen floating, mostly on Aberdeen-Lumley beaches, national investigation into the deaths of the marine fish has never been launched since then.
The Virginia research indicates that some fish die owing to rising water temperatures and huge volumes of some harmful aquatic plants. The latter is largely caused by decay of seaweed wastes, which are mostly woven with sharp objects such as syringes that kill fish underneath the water.
The decay is also due to people who dispose sachets of plastic bags, rubber plastics, pieces of clothes and others found in the bottom of the sea. Sewers and drainages, running through the seashores onto the slums containing chemicals, also empty their waste into the Rokel waters in Sierra Leone.
These are usually brought by the rains from fuel stations situated in the heart of the country’s bustling city, Freetown. Usually, waste water, from office buildings and private houses, are carried away through narrow-half-paved-gutters onto the Rokel River.
In a country which is known for its deplorable sanitation and unregulated livestock systems, it is very common to see poorly constructed makeshift structures serving as ‘pig pens’ built on the seashores of the capital, Freetown.
Our slums in Freetown are notorious places where private individuals put up structures like ‘hog pens.’ People who live in Kroo Bay, Moa Wharf, Susan Bay, Old Wharf and other slum areas usually rear pigs on the shores above the sea.
A number of unkempt, straw-like houses are enclosed with rustic zincs and sticks for raising domestic pigs as livestock. Most of these animals’ faces are washed over by the rains and drifted into the Rokel River, causing death threats to fish and human illness like rashes on those who go swimming.
This is very common to see dead animals thrown into the waters of Sierra Leone, especially the beach areas where there are dead dogs, fish, frogs and other creatures with flies hovering over piles of seaweed waste bears testimonies of an un-sanitized beach and polluted seawater.
Some countries around the world use dip net to collect dying fish that shows abnormal behavior on water surface and on pond edges. The dead fish are taken to special diagnostic lab and kept in freezing boxes, which may contain water and oxygen. They are usually wrapped with wet paper towels in plastic bags on ice in a Styrofoam cooler.
When signs of diseases on fish are widely noticed, a handful of both dead and living fishes must be collected for a diagnosis to be conducted on them to ascertain the causes of their frequent deaths.
To determine the correct cause of fish killed, fish farmers generally need to take 5 to 10 live, dying fish that show any signs of disease, along with several water samples from the pond. But the dead fish are not accepted for diagnosis, according to a study conducted by Virginia Cooperative Extension in Virginia State University.
During the sampling process, it is advisable that fish and water samples should not be placed together in the same container under experiment. However, owing to the series of neglects on Aberdeen and Lumley beaches, our major public beaches, the costal sandy areas do not offer any sort of comfier atmosphere for a possible sunbathe activity and gazing appetite as the beaches’ naturalness is slowly being stripped off.
The beachfront has already become a dumping site for restaurants and bar owners. And it is gradually becoming a burial site for dead fishes and animals, preventing swimming and sun bathe activities from happening there.
The seaweed wastes at Aberdeen beach are woven with some avalanche of rubbish, which reeks uncontrollably. The dead fish, especially, sends suffocating stench, which may also cause illness when inhaled.
The country’s tourism ministry is said to have recently employed some young people who should be keeping the beaches tidy, especially the Aberdeen and Lumley shores.
The beach cleaners operate on a shift basis, but due to the vastness of the beach they hardly keep the beaches clean.
Osman, a beach marshal worker, employed by the National Tourist Board (NTB) Sierra Leone, expresses firm conviction that the number of beach cleaners, tasked to keep the beach tidy, is very small.
“We have beach cleaners, Marshall beach officers and lifeguard officers employed at THE Tourist Board. But trust me, my bro, the number of beach cleaners is quite small considering the wideness of the beach and the rubbish seen every day,” he disclosed.
The Aberdeen Beach Marshall team, which Osman is part of, is responsible for providing security on the beaches, especially by protecting the interess of restaurants and bar owners whose structures are built on the edges of Aberdeen-Lumley beaches.
“We stop people carrying wares or selling on the beaches except those who are not registered with the National Tourist Board (NTB). We are blamed by bar owners for allowing hawkers to bring their businesses here,” he explained.
The small number of beach cleaners comes with fewer, if any, logistics to easily get rid of the dirt from the beach areas and underground water thereby sanitizing the water and preventing diseases caused to human beings.
For instance, most countries use Barber surf rake sand groomer machine to clean their beaches. The tractor-towed machine is used in more than 90 countries on six continents worldwide. Barber and other cleaning machines can be used to effectively remove pollution such as seaweed, dead fish, glass, syringes, plastic, cans, shells, stone, wood and virtually any dirt. They can be used to remove oil and tar balls from beach sand after oil spill disasters.
Meanwhile, it is very sad to note that a whole country, in spite of its huge revenue base from taxes paid and royalties collected from mining, could not purchase advanced cleaning machines like the barber rake, which is widely used around the world.
The Bio administration prioritises tourism as its alternative source of revenue generation. It is therefore wise to give keen attention on the unsanitary condition of our beaches, which affects human leisurely activities and cause more deaths on fish.
Getting modernized beach cleaning machines, by regularly keeping the beaches tidy and ordering the tourism minster to ban all those unfit-for-purpose restaurants and bars along the Aberdeen and Lumley shores, are moves worth taking by President Bio to ensure that Sierra Leone becomes a tourist’s hub nation like other countries in Africa.