Today is World Ocean's Day

World Ocean’s Day: “Together we have the power to protect the Ocean”

8th June, 2013, World Ocean’s Day:

The world's oceans and their coastal systems are a great resource, providing food, water and a wide range of services valued at about US $ 25000 billion per year. For instance, more than a billion people worldwide rely on fish as their main source of protein, with an estimated 38 million people benefitting from direct employment from fisheries and fishery products. In Ghana, fish is the most important non-traditional export commodity accounting for about 5 percent of the agricultural GDP and contributing about 10% of the country’s working population. However, there are concerns at local, national, regional and global levels about the serious threat and degradation these oceans and their coastal systems are currently facing. These threats are mainly due to anthropogenic activities such as overfishing, illegal and unregulated fishing methods, population growth, pollution, erosion and sand winning, climate change, land use change, invasive species, transboundary issues and resource use conflicts.

The Department of Marine & Fisheries Sciences at the University of Ghana, the foremost and only centre directly concerned with oceanographic research and training of fisheries scientists among Ghana’s institutions of higher learning joins the international community to mark this year's World Ocean’s Day under the theme “Together we have the power to protect the Ocean”. We take this opportunity to call for the establishment of operational and specific response mechanisms, stakeholder participation in decision-making at all levels of policy formulation and implementation, as well as community involvement, in the monitoring and enforcements of by-laws and the establishment of a National Coastal Zone Management Commission to help protect our oceans. Such a commission would take care of the sectoral approaches and minimise overlaps and duplications which paradoxically, in the long term, negatively impacts on marine and coastal development. One illustration can be seen in the rush for securing huge loans to expand Tema Harbour while land for expansion of the exit roads to evacuate landed cargo are being used for buildings which have the immense negative impact on port efficiency! A National Coastal Zone Management Commission is therefore the way by which we can protect our oceans and coastal environment from degradation, save marine and human lives, and secure our future.

Department of Marine and Fisheries Sciences

Faculty of Science

University of Ghana