Ghana must do more to brighten prospects of fishing industry – Prof. Akpalu

Professor William Akpalu, Director of the Environment and Natural Resource Research Initiative (ENRRI-EfD Ghana), has advocated proactive measures to enhance the prospects of Ghana’s fishing industry.

The outlook of the industry, he said, was not encouraging, saying an analysis of the catch per vessel over the years, that is, from the 1990s to 2018, indicated a sharp reduction in the catch made by the fishers.

“Each vessel is catching less and less and less fish, and potentially we are losing a lot,” he told the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Accra, on the sidelines of a workshop on ‘Emerging Issues on Capture Fisheries Management in Ghana.’

According to him, fishery like any other renewable resource, was such that, “if the rate at which you are extracting the resource exceeds the rate at which the resource is replenishing itself, eventually the stock will collapse.”

The workshop, which was organised under the auspices of the ENRRI-EfD Ghana, and funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, brought together scientists and researchers from the academia, members from the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Fisheries Commission, and other stakeholders.

Prof. Akpalu, who is also the Dean, School of Research and Graduate Studies, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), stressed the need for the country to establish marine parks.

This, he said, was necessary to check overexploitation of the fish resources while improving the stock for the benefit of the nation.

Additionally, the country ought to build a good database for the fishing industry, he advised, saying this was critical to inform policies required to making life comfortable for those whose livelihood depended on fishing.

The workshop discussed topics relating to improving the fishing value chain, revenue lost due to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, premix fuel subsidy, among others.