Turtle Rock is a sacred site of the Iyassa people in Ebodje. Photo by Leocadia Bongben, used with permission.
This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.
Alongside Cameroon’s coast, 10 villages lie within the Manyange Na Elombo Campo Marine Protected Area (MPA), which spans 110,300 hectares and is meant to protect the fragile marine life and coastal ecosystems on Cameroon’s Atlantic coast. While hundreds of local people rely on the waters and the coastal area of this MPA, they have historically been left out of management decisions and operations regarding the park. However, local activists are now pushing for a participatory management system that would give them a greater stake in managing the park.
Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) drew up a document, titled “Guide to the involvement of local communities in the management of protected areas in Cameroon,” which was officially presented on June 28, 2024, in Limbé defining the role of local communities, as well as their involvement in the planning and decision-making process in the management of protected areas to guarantee the integrity of the areas and their enhancement with a view to local development. They suggested that communities around protected areas form committees and work with the conservation office in the management of the parks.
Long before this document, Tube Awu (Our Ocean), a Community Research and Development Association, and the community have been collaborating despite the lack of a government management plan and prior sensitization to revitalize Manyange Na Elombo-Campo. Patrick Maballa Sambou, the conservator of the marine park says,
We (the conservation office) analyzed the threats and identified several activities to be carried out. We produced a charter for the sustainable management of resources.
Sambou, in collaboration with Tube Awu, prompted the creation of fishers’ associations in all villages within the park to discuss how to surmount three difficulties: the protection of sea turtles, fishing gear impacting the environment, and the closed fishing seasons (a period when fish are allowed to reproduce and no fishing activity is allowed). Ela, a fisherman in Ebodje, one of the villages within the park, explains:
Not only do some of us take part in protecting the sea turtles, making sure the eggs are safe as we follow the turtles, but we also sensitize our community not to eat turtles that we accidentally catch in our nets, and we report trawlers to the conservator.
The participation of the community is the outcome of an agreement with the park’s conservation office: When sea turtles are accidentally captured, they are reported to the staff, who then determine how to save them. If the turtle is still alive, they release it to the sea; if not, they authorize the fisher to eat it. While the agreement marks progress, the park lacks rehabilitation facilities and has no way to prevent accidental catch, also known as bycatch, from occurring.
Drawing inspiration from the Iyassa culture, which already has a period of time with no fishing from July to August (called “Vilonda,” which means “the sea is angry,” referring to storm season), this same time period was chosen for the closed fishing season. Fishing gear called “wakawaka,” which has a small net size, was prohibited to prevent juvenile fish from being caught in fish reproduction zones.
After all components of the charter were approved by the chiefs, authorities, and fishermen's groups, the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock confirmed the document in 2023, which is now used to manage activities of the park. Sambou explains:
The charter provides for surveillance with the communities. They fish in 24,000 hectares (of the protected area out of the 110,300 hectares), though not yet demarcated, and it prohibits fishing around the sacred sites, Turtle and Wolf Rocks, drawn from the Iyassa tradition, for about a kilometer, which, coincidentally, are sites of high conservation value.
Mambo Emile Ebodje, a fisherman, adds:
In our tradition, even before the park was designated, the Turtle and Wolf Rocks are our sacred sites, and we don’t fish there. The conservation officer is… following our tradition, [which is] the reason we agreed to this rule.
Ela continues:
Even though the fishermen in Ebodje village still find it difficult to function as a unit, we have fishermen's groups to oversee the fishing operation thanks to participatory management.
To secure the park, the conservation office patrols the park twice a month for two and a half hours with a team of eight people, including eco-guards and community members. This monitoring is supported by the Cameroon Wildlife Conservation Society (CWCS) whose initiative, funded by Oceans 5, provided a speedboat with a 40 KW engine and GPS to the conservation office.
The Ocean 5 project was initially funded for three years with around USD 699,000. The second phase is expected to continue the work, but as CWCS does not receive funding from the Cameroonian government, the project will stop if funding ends.
Community lodging for tourists at Ebodje by Leocadia Bongben used with permission
Eugene Diyouke, interim coordinator of CWCS, says,
We are enhancing the Marine Protected Area’s ability to provide conservation services along the coastline of Douala-Edea and Manyange Na Elombo Campo. The project also focused on producing a management plan and other documents to improve protected area management.
Illegal fishing within protected waters
Between 2021 and 2023, trawlers and illegal fishing vessels spent between 800 and 1,000 hours in the park and, throughout the year, during the fishing season, posed numerous challenges to conservation, such as overfishing and destruction of the marine ecosystem, as well as depleting the catch of local fishermen.
Thanks to training from the African Marine Organization (AMMCO), the conservation office now employs Global Fishing Watch tools to monitor trawlers fishing in the marine park. Sambou notes:
We gather information on the trawlers, the name of the company, and the owners, but can only see incursions after and not before. Therefore, [we are] unable to stop the trawlers.
Tube Awu has currently identified more than 40 fish species in the MPA, with many more to go. Among these 40 species of fish, 12 are already on the IUCN Red List as species on the verge of extinction, including sharks, whales, dolphins, and rays.
Wanba Joel, an aquatic and megafauna expert at Tube Awu, says that through a participatory science program, fishers who know the area and species can assist in collecting data at the landing station, including the description, length, size, and the nets used to catch them. This provides Tube Awu with information about the level of resource exploitation, the current stock, and fishery sustainability. This science program initially ran from September to May in 2023 and from September to November in 2024, as it’s dependent on funding availability.
There are four species of sea turtles: olive ridley, leatherback, green, and hawksbill.
Among them, some species use the beaches to lay eggs, two species feed in the water, and two species of whales and dolphins have also been identified.
Sea turtles come to lay their eggs from September to May, at which time surveillance by the community and Tube Awu is stepped up. Tube Awu trains and remunerates community members who clean and monitor the beach, keep an eye on the sea for potential turtle feeding grounds, identify nesting sites, and transport eggs to the nursery.
All of these activities contribute to gathering data about sea turtles and the features of their egg-laying environment, which helps to lower the risks posed by dogs and crabs. When the young turtles are mature enough to lay eggs, they can return to the beach and do so thanks to the natural hatchery, a secure natural space where the eggs are placed to hatch, according to Yves Maximes Mondjeli Ndjokou Djongo, the sea turtle programme officer at Tube Awu.
In contrast to the former practice of preparing captured turtles as food, community members have been observed regularly releasing the turtles. Fisherman Ebodje said the residents respect fishing and non-fishing times, use appropriate gear, and help spread the word about the MPA's protection. He explains:
We now use big-sized nets to preserve the fish. Initially, we were eating turtles here, but since the creation of the park, we have respected the law. We release turtles accidentally caught.
He continues:
The park provides us with employment because during the egg-laying season, we are recruited to patrol the beach and gather the eggs to protect them from crabs and dogs… We now know the season and how to place the eggs in the same way the turtle left them.
Ebodje said he is eager to make money from patrolling the beach to protect the sea turtles.
Ela, who is in charge of the community lodge, notes:
The turtles are an attraction to tourists. We have the Ebo Tour (a community lodge) to lodge people who stay and watch the turtles, some with camping cars. They can watch the turtles arrive, dig, and lay their eggs.
Challenges remain
Despite the potential of the marine park, Wanba says they have observed a decrease in fish. In 2014, 44 species were identified, and in 2025, 32 fish species were identified during the same period and in the same zone.
“The number of sea turtles has decreased from the previous season,” Mondjeli says, despite releasing 30,000 turtles back into the ocean since 2015.
56 nests were found during the 2023–2024 season; 42 were secured, while 14 were lost to dogs, birds, and crabs. The 2024–2025 season also saw the identification of 63 nests, 52 secured, and 11 lost to birds, dogs, and crabs.
Nesting sites at Manyange Na Elombo Campo from 2023 to 2025. Source: Tube Awu
There may be fewer trawlers—three entered the park so far between 2021 and 2023—yet technological barriers still pose problems for enforcement. For the past two years, the same three trawlers, Nicolas, Adonia, and Erica 1, have illegally fished in the park. The vessels fly Cameroonian flags, but it is difficult to determine the owner, as many illegitimate ships will fly unauthorized flags when conducting illegal activities. Sambou adds:
Signals of trawlers were detected this year, but we were unable to determine if they were coming from fishing trawlers since they concealed their location and turned off their GPS.
Global Fishing Watch data identifies vessels within the MPA from June 1 to August 30, 2025, for up to five hours, but it is challenging to determine their fishing status. Sambou says:
Within 48 hours, we can use TravelMarine to scan the database and determine who went fishing. We can’t go very far; the fishermen are our eyes and ears.
Commercial trawlers come to the area because of the abundance of different fish species, including threadfins, croackers, catfish, bonga, and sardine in Manyange Na Elombo Campo and the entire coastal zone. Sardine accounted for 80 percent of Cameroonian fishermen’s catch in 2018, according to Wamba, and was unavailable last season.
A sonar-sound kit investigation by Tube Awu reveals an impact on the sea structure, including mangroves, grasslands, and coral reefs, in areas of illegal fishing.
Because the official MPA decree only states the objective of limiting the incursion of fishing trawlers, there is little enforcement capacity. For instance, there are no financial penalties for trespassing in the MPA or illegal fishing, and the complaints of local fishermen about trawlers destroying their nets and making away with their catch seem not to attract government action. Sambou says:
The conservation office intends to provide fishermen with cellphones so they can record illegal fishing activities using the GPS coordinates as evidence. [And] planting buoys to demarcate the MPA and the area reserved for local fishers.
He adds that the government does intend to produce an official management plan, “which may raise the protection level of the MPA.”
Ngalie of MINFOF says,
The Management Plan will be drawn within the African Development Bank AFDB project to improve the resilience of riverside communities in the area between the mouth of the Ntem and the mouth of the Wouri.
The bank agreed to finance the project, and though communities would be involved, the timeline is not yet known.
Fretey, the turtle expert, said he attempted to include a site of international interest, Chutes de La Lobé, in the MPA designation but was refused. Fretey notes:
It would have been possible, once the port had been created, to create a marine bridge between the marine park and the Chutes, with the port paying a toll to each boat crossing this marine line. Elsewhere in the world, a similar tax system exists between a Marine Protected Area and the installation of a port adjacent.
It remains to be seen whether the future management plan that is developed in consultation with the community will lessen concerns of fishing restrictions, improve governance, and increase community involvement in Manyange Na Elombo-Campo Marine Protected Area.
