Fishermen at the Prampram Landing Beach in the Ningo Prampram district, have backed government’s policy for the 2018 closed season scheduled for August 7 to September 4, 2018, to save the industry from total collapse.
They are, however, appealing to the government to as a matter of urgency enforce the fisheries laws and regulations on illegal unreported and unregulated practices before, during and after the closed season in order to yield maximum benefits from the closed season.
Addressing the media, Assembly Member for West Lower Prampram, Solomon Djangmah said despite the decreasing fish landings, the number of marine canoes and boat fishing in Prampram alone is a little over 60 canoes in the year 2000 to over 300 artisanal canoes presently.
He added that the figure shows an increase of canoes over the period but while the fishing effort is very high, catch per unit effort is extremely low due to the large numbers which made the sector to be faced with the crisis of overfishing of all stocks.
According to him, the situation is further alarmed by illegal fishing practices such as light fishing, blast/dynamite fishing, use of obnoxious chemicals to fish, use of small mesh size nets, trawlers fishing in nearshore reserved for artisanal fisheries as well as the pervasive use of monofilament nets in the marine sectors.
This he believes calls for a concerted effort by all stakeholders in addressing the issue.
They are also happy that government has allowed them to fish a day within the closed season for their Homowo festival and therefore believe their backing of the government decision cannot be a betrayal of some of their uninformed colleagues at other landing beaches.