Pair trawling still in practice in Ghana's waters

September 16, 2008 Back Page

Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru

LOCAL fishermen yesterday met with journalists and presented vivid pictures of pair trawling still continuing in Ghana’s waters.
They said the evidence was gathered by a spy expedition they undertook in response to a challenge thrown to them by the Ministry of Fisheries to provide evidence of pair trawling.
The fishermen used two canoes on the spy mission at Elmina, Axim and Half Assin and took photographs of fishing boats doing pair trawling. One of the pair trawlers bears the name Akuya I Akuya II, with registration number AF 672.
Messrs Ato Sortor, Richster Nii Amarh Amarfio and Kobina Badu (Manoma) were speaking at the press conference organised by the Friends of the Nation (FoN), to express the concern of local fishermen to what they described as low harvest resulting from the activity of illegal pair trawlers.
According to Mr Sortor, in the first spy expedition they embarked upon on August 22, 2008, they saw eight pair trawlers, including Akuya, at Axim.
He said the latest spy expedition at Cape Coast last Saturday, September 6, 2008 showed evidence of seven pair trawlers.
He said they captured the name of one of the pair trawlers which he gave as Benhill 7 & 8.
Mr Amarfio claimed that the pair trawlers fished around the clock but indicated that they normally fished in the night to avoid being seen.
He said the owners switched off the light and went trawling destroying the fish in the process.
Mr Badu claimed that the activities of the illegal fishing trawlers had destroyed the fish resources, and thus making it difficult for them to make good catch.
As a result, he said, he had stopped going fishing with his two canoes, and indicated that all the 60 fishermen under his care had lost their jobs.
The local fishermen claimed that the pair trawling had destroyed the habitat of the fish, killed small fish and driven others away.
The local fishermen, therefore, appealed to the government to ban the activities of fish trawlers to save the country’s fish resources from depletion and also save their source of livelihood.
Earlier, the Programmes Co-ordinator of FoN, Mr Kyei Kwadwo Yamoah, called on the government to “as a matter of urgency ban the practice of pair trawling in Ghana waters, and this must be followed by an effective enforcement of the ban to ensure that no illegal pair trawling goes on”.
He proposed the promulgation of a Legislative Instrument (LI) to back the fisheries law to provide the proper legal atmosphere for monitoring, control and surveillance activities.
Mr Yamoah requested for the Ministry of Fisheries, the Fisheries Commission, the Ghana Navy and the coastal communities to be “adequately resourced to effectively carry out the monitoring, control and surveillance activities”.
He again proposed the re-establishment and institutionalisation of community-based fisheries management committee structures at the community, district, regional and national levels to help police the country’s waters.
Meanwhile, chief fishermen in the Western and Central regions have pledged support for a policy that would ensure an official ban on fishing activities nationwide at particular periods of the year as part of efforts to reduce the rate at which fish resource are being depleted, reports Shirley Asiedu-Addo.
At a workshop at Cape Coast on Friday, the fishermen, however, reiterated that these efforts would be a fiasco if large vessels operating on the high seas were not checked.
They said it was obvious that there were no effective ways of checking the activities of these vessels operating on the seas.
The workshop, which was organised by Friends of the Nation (FoN), was attended by about 40 chief fishermen and members of Community-Based Fisheries Management Committee in the Central and Western regions.
The workshop, which is being organised in all the coastal regions of the country, seeks to support efforts at reducing poverty and encouraging community rights and voices by coastal communities as a tool for sustainable fisheries management.
The fishermen noted that they were ready to help ensure that the resources in the sea were efficiently managed for posterity but said managing their activities without managing the vessels could even worsen the current state of the sea resource.
Mr Kwadwo Yamoah Kyei, Project Co-ordinator with FoN, said it was important to ensure that the rate of harvest in the seas was less than the rate of rejuvenation to ensure sustained livelihood.
He noted that traditional methods of conservation including bans on fishing were helpful and said such methods must be included in any policy on fishing.