Jade Taw village is located south of Ngapali beach in Myanmar. Locals here catch small fish called Nge Ni Tu by the billions, dry and sell them.
Ngapali beach is located in Thandwe district, Rakhine state, Myanmar. It is 6km long stretch of white sand sandwiched between warm Indian ocean and forest of palm trees. After 3 weeks of exploring interior of Myanmar, I wanted to chill out a bit on some quiet spot on the shores of Indian ocean and Ngapali beach fit the bill perfectly. This area started to open to tourism fairly recently and at very slow pace. Accommodation is mainly in well built, comfortable and clean bungalows, in the shade of palm trees. The mainstay of local economy has always been fishing, but lately, more and more locals are taking jobs in tourism sector. One day, as I was walking along the shore south of Ngapali beach, I came across a very unusual sight; about km long and 100 m wide stretch of sand completely covered with small fish drying on blue tarps, billions and billions of them. The fish is kind of anchovy called Nga Ni Tu. They catch them in large nets at night. Since these small brained creatures are attracted to light, the wooden boats that these fishermen use are loaded with powerful lightbulbs. The fish is then dried for 2 days on the sun and are used as popular local snack. The bamboo huts visible among the palm trees are part of Jade Taw village. Here, everything is made from bamboo: houses, fences, tables, chairs, hats, blankets, I have seen lots of women carefully picking individual fishes from the multitude, putting them into plastic buckets. I don't know what is the criteria here, why some fish gets chosen over me, they all looked more or less the same. I was surprised that I didn't see any seagulls stealing the
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Location: Jade Taw village, Thandwe District, Rakhine state, Myanmar
Photo credit: © Dordo Brnobic / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: beach, burma, district, dry, drying, fish, fishermen, fishing, jade, myanmar, ngapali, nge, ni, rakhine, smelt, state, taw, thandwe, tu, village
