LOCAL FISHERMEN STILL AT RISK (BACK PAGE) 27-01-09

Story: News Desk Report

FISHERMEN along the coastline of the country, from Keta to Axim, say another form of danger has emerged to threaten their trade since the launch last December of “Operation Stock Control”, to curb the incidence of pair trawling.
They said while the illegal practice of pair trawling was still continuing, the bigger vessels had adopted a more dangerous method, employing powerful lights and guns at night, to scare away the canoe fishermen and sweep everything, including fingerlings, from the sea.
In December last year, the government acquired two naval speed boats and launched “Operation Stock Control” involving the Ghana Navy and Air Force, to protect the country’s territorial waters against the negative activities of pair trawling by foreign fishing vessels and preserve the fish stock in the country.
However, according to the fishermen, nothing had changed since the launch of the anti-pair trawling programme. Instead, they said, more sinister moves had been adopted by some foreign vessels to exacerbate the depletion of fish stock in the country and deny local fishermen of their livelihood.
They said they had, therefore, resigned their fate in the hands of the new government and appealed to President J. E. A. Mills to take an immediate and firm action to halt the negative activities and alleviate their plight.
From Adina, near Denu in the Volta Region, Tim Dzamboe reports that two Japanese fishing trawlers reportedly trapped the nets of fishermen at Anloga, Anyanui and Tokor in the Keta District resulting in clashes between the trawler owners and local fishermen.
The Ketu South District Chief fisherman, Mr Seth Abotsi, said apart from that the fishing trawlers cast their nets very wide and threw unwanted dead fishes back into the sea.
Mr Abotsi claimed that even 20 local fishing vessels cannot load or convey the volume of dead fish thrown back into the sea and said it constituted danger to life on sea, as well as a waste to the nation’s resources.
He said several complaints had been made to the Ghana Navy at the Naval Base but because of the lack of funds they could not patrol the seas regularly revealing that a single patrol could cost not less than GH¢1200.
From Chorkor and Osu in Accra some of the fishermen alleged that operators of foreign trawlers threatened them with guns when they encountered them on the sea and tried to resist their activities, reports Kofi Yeboah.
A spokesperson for the fishermen at Chorkor, Mr Ebenezer Larbi, who made the allegation, said contrary to fishing regulations, the trawlers also used strong light in the water at night to attract all sizes of fish.
Mr Larbi said after the catch, the operators sorted out the big fish and threw the small ones into the sea, adding that because the small fish were dead, they got rotten in the water and that emitted an offensive smell.
At Osu, Messrs Michael Anani, aka Ayigbe, Musah Nikoi and Moses Nii Halm also expressed similar sentiments as the fishermen in Chorkor.
They recalled an instance when two pair trawlers swept one of their canoes, nicknamed “Otrumu”, damaging it and killing one fisherman in the process.
From Takoradi, Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu reports that fishermen along the cost of the Western Region said months after the lunch of “Operation Stock Control” by the Ministry of Defence by the previous government, pair trawling activities had increased.
According to the fishermen, the vessels had devised a new strategy of putting their lights off in the night to operate under the cover of darkness.
The fishermen said during the launch, they were promised that the Ghana Navy would be working together with the Ghana Air Force but they claimed the Air Force had not been flying.
At Half Assini in the Jomoro District, Nana Kweku Adu said the situation at the moment was very bad, “because the focus has been on the Sekondi waters, most of them have shifted to the Half-Assini-New Town water and are creating a lot of trouble for us”.
“What they do now is that they wait until night then they would descend to the prohibited 30-metre contour and sweep our nets away and as we speak many of them also pair during the day,” he said.
When contacted, the ???Head of Public Relations Col. Emmanuel Nibo??? said since the launch of “Operation Stock Control”, the Navy had done a lot of daily patrols in the country’s territorial waters.
He said in spite of that exercise, “it is the prime responsibility of fishermen to ensure that they report any illegal activity to the navy for action”.
Meanwhile, fishermen in the Western and Central regions have called for the complete ban of pair trawling.
They also indicated that single trawlers should be stopped from operating all year round, in conformity with international laws that required their operation for only three months in a year.
A chief fisherman at Takoradi, Nana Jojo Solomon, said although the last administration tried to regulate the practice, its efforts did not yield the desired results.
“What we want is a complete ban of pair trawling and the institution of open and close sessions for single trawlers,” he stated.
Taking a different view of the general happenings along the coastlines, fishermen at the Tema Fishing Harbour said the activities of pair trawlers had decreased over the past few weeks, Rose Hayford Darko reports.
The Chief Fisherman, Nii Odametey II, said the issue of pair trawling had reduced considerably since the beginning of the year because they had not sighted any pair trawling activity at sea.
He noted that the critical problem now was the use of light at sea by fishermen, including local fishermen.
Nii Odametey appealed to the government to enforce the law against the use of light for fishing, since the practice was affecting their business because the light attracted all sizes of fish, which eventually died because of the heat generated by the light.
An elderly fisherman, Onukpa Kojo Anum, was of the view that the previous government did not help the fishermen to check the bad practices at sea and called on the present government to work vigorously towards bringing to an end the bad fishing practices.
As of 8 am on Saturday morning when the Daily Graphic got to the canoe beach many of the canoes had returned from fishing with mostly fingerlings and anchovies, which gave credence to the assertion that the pair trawler were depleting the sea by catching small fish with the use of light.