The Chairperson of the Scientific and Technical Committee at the Fisheries Commission, Dr. Angela Lamptey has stated that women have a vital role to play in addressing IUU fishing in Ghana.
According to her, from pre-harvest to the processing and sale of fish stock, women play a huge role and so can create change in the sector.
She was speaking on the sidelines of a training workshop on Marine Security reporting for selected journalists in Takoradi.
It was under the Integrated Responses to Threats to Maritime Safety and Security in the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Domain in West and Central Africa Project.
As part of reducing maritime insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea, the Kofi Annan International Peace Training Center and the Danish government are implementing a five-year project on Integrated Responses to Threats to maritime safety and security in the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Domain in West and Central Africa (2022-2026).
Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported fishing remains one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems in Ghana as it has the potential to undermine national and regional efforts in conserving and managing fish stocks.
This challenge is contributing to depleted fish stock apart from threatening marine biodiversity and livelihoods of mostly coastal communities while worsening poverty and food insecurity.
Data from the Environment and Natural Resource Research Initiative, ENRRI – EfD Ghana, estimates that Ghana loses over US$200million annually due to IUU fishing.
The Ghana’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministry as part of measures to address the challenge has banned the use of monofilament fishing nets, illegal transshipment (saiko), the use of lights, dynamite and DDT for fishing in Ghana’s waters. It has also instituted the closed season for fishing. But many fishers continue to flout these regulations.
The Scientific and Technical Committee of the Fisheries Commission Chairperson, Dr. Lamptey believes women who are usually the financiers of fishing expeditions, processors of fish harvest and sellers of the fish can adopt measures such as rejecting fish from IUU to compel the fishers to change.
“It is not just the industrial fishing trawlers who engage in IUU, the artisanal ones are also involved. When you come to the artisanal sector, most of the financiers are women. If I am a woman and I am sponsoring a fishing expedition, I will not sponsor the fishers to go and buy generators to engage in light fishing.
“Moreover when they land with catch, they have a way of detecting fishes caught with light, their swim bladder gushes out of their mouth. Don’t even buy it to process it to sell. Once there is no market for such fishes or those that have a lot of juveniles, the fishermen will be discouraged from catching them. So these are some of the roles women can play to prevent IUU fishing,” she said.
She has also called on the authorities to remove obstacles that prevent women from developing themselves in the fisheries sector so they can be well equipped to help with policy formulation and enforcement of fisheries laws.
“Let’s remove all obstacles preventing women from playing leadership roles in the fisheries sector. We should not look down on women as being too fragile to be in the industry. The era of women being pushed to the kitchen is past and gone,” she said.
“They can even set up a fund to sponsor girls in education to study all the activities in the fisheries industry, the science in the industry and encourage them to come back to help enforce the rregulations so the sector will be developed,” she suggested
