The Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Mavis Hawa Koomson says the ministry will from this year deploy an Electronic Monitoring System (EMS) on three trawl vessels to help combat illegal fishing activities.
The minister, who announced this during her turn at the Ministry of Information’s ‘Meet the Press’ series in Accra on Wednesday, June 14, 2023, said the exercise would be done on a pilot phase and extended later to other trawl vessels by 2025.
According to her, the Electronic Monitoring System has a video camera, a camera and a camera positioning system (GPS) which would operate 24 hours.
She also mentioned the Ministerial Directive on specifications in trawl gear to reduce the catch of juvenile fishes and bycatches as well as ensuring that trawl vessels do not go to sea for more than 30 days.
The minister stated that Ghana earned $250 million from export of fish products in 2022, constituting about 1.2 per cent to GDP and, therefore, called on Ghanaians to support the government in managing the fisheries resources sustainably.
She indicated that though the observance of the closed season posed some challenges to fishing communities since its inception in 2016, benefits far outstrips the challenges.
Some of the benefits she mentioned include a reduction in over fishing and high fishing pressure, recovering over exploited fish stocks as well as rebuilding depleted fish stocks.
She, however, stated that to mitigate the impact of the 2022 closed season on the livelihood of the fishermen and the fishing community, the ministry supported the fishermen with 20,000 bags of rice, over 8,000 cartons of oil, 1,150 subsidized outboard motors among others.
“As a way of reducing pressure on the fisheries resources, the Ministry and its partners including Ghana Fisheries Recovery Activities has launched the livelihood training support for fishers starting with 550 fishers in masonry, carpentry, dressmaking, electronics among several others,” she added.
The 2023 closed season for canoe and inshore fishermen will start on July 1 to 31 while closed season for industrial trawlers will be observed from July 1 to August 31, 2023.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah