Spotlight: Listening to stories of the sea

I was born in the coastal city of Limbe in Cameroon, where going to the sea is a way of life. 

Every Sunday, we went to the beach after church to hang out, eat some fish, and just have fun. Fishing is a sacred culture there, but I wasn’t born into a fishing family. My mom was a farmer. She grew local crops that we ate at home. The excess she sold at the market to support my school and our home. Tourists visit Limbe for the beaches, and people often envy the coast and the fisheries. I’m proud to say I was born in that place by the sea. 

I first studied agriculture as an undergrad. I saw how difficult farming could be for my mom, and I wanted to find solutions. When I graduated, I worked for an international agricultural institute trying to help cocoa farmers adapt to climate change. Two years later, I was able to go to graduate school in Canada with the support of an African Leaders of Tomorrow scholarship, a program that trains young African leaders in public policy. My program supervisor was trained in fisheries, so I decided to try fisheries work because I knew some of the challenges from growing up in Limbe. 

For my master’s degree, I studied power dynamics and challenges in fisheries management. Coastal communities in Africa often lose access to their fisheries resources when industrial foreign fleets fish in domestic zones. One thing that struck me is that in discussions of management or even funding, the people in the room were mostly trained in the policy realm. They were development experts, policy experts, and management experts, not necessarily fishers or experts with firsthand experience. I wanted to be a person in the room well-versed enough to influence policy.

I met my future PhD advisor by chance over lunch at a conference in Thailand. He was an anthropologist who was more of a storyteller, someone who cared deeply about participative storytelling. For that type of research, the first thing you do in the field is listen to people and their stories. I was originally planning to study how coastal communities in Canada are responding to challenges like climate change and environmental changes. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there was no way I could connect with those communities. My best option was to return to Cameroon and do my PhD research there.

It was emotional going back to where I was born with the expertise of a researcher listening to stories. I’m not the son of a fisher, but I could relate to their stories. When I was growing up, eating fish was like putting salt in your food. Now, you need to be wealthy to be able to buy fish. Fishers in Cameroon are facing challenges – climate change, injustices, women’s empowerment issues, and the modernization of fishing – similar to the ones faced by fishers around the world. Through my research, I began to understand how people’s lives have been impacted by these challenges. Going to fisheries conferences abroad, I didn’t hear people talking about Cameroon. And yet, those stories are still important.

The day after I landed in California to start my position at the Center for Ocean Solutions, I taught a class for the Blue Food Action Lab. I felt nervous, of course, but it helped that the course was on a topic I’m passionate about. The students were passionate, too. They cared about hands-on research and hearing from people who have been working in the blue food space for decades. I feel inspired by the students who care enough to listen to the stories of those in this space, by teaching and researching with a team trying to address small-scale fisheries issues, and by working at a university that invests in this type of work. It’s a big win for me to see the stories of people working in small-scale fisheries brought to a more global stage.