The town being eaten by the sea... and the researcher racing to rescue it | Business

Ayetoro, a low-lying coastal community in southern Nigeria, is being impacted by rising sea levels.

"I grew up about an hour from here, and even then, I heard stories of the ocean frequently wreaking havoc. I always wondered how this community experienced such a dramatic shift in its fortunes. "In the '60s, the sea was very far from where the people lived. Ironically, it was the major problem fishermen were facing," said Oba Oluwambe Ojagbohunmi, the community's traditional ruler."But at the moment, boats can no longer berth here," he added.

"This has always been a pain point for me and inspired me to learn more about coastal flooding," Iyaomolere said."I had to go and observe again and again. At some point, I had to travel down to Lagos to visit the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, but the institute's library did not have recent data to support my research. It took a year to get all the data I needed," Iyaomolere said.

During this period, he met Emmanuel Aralu, then the secretary of the Ayetoro Youth Congress, who helped him establish connections with key decision-makers in the community.He also discovered that in 1995, two Nigerian researchers had published a study which suggested that Ayetoro and Awoye were at risk of being lost"even with a 0.2-metre rise in sea level".

"At the moment, we have lost two-thirds of the community," said Aralu, unveiling a pencil-drawn map of the community on yellow cardboard. The map portrays a clear division of the community into two similar sections, east and west, with the prominent Broad Street positioned at the centre. Although no official measurements have been carried out, various Nigerian researchers have cited land subsidence rates ranging from 25 to 125mm per year in oil-producing coastal communities. Iyaomolere attempted to conduct measurements to support the qualitative evidence he gathered but could not access the necessary tools.

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