The ministry said it would, for its part, empower the Fisheries Enforcement Unit to curb any illegal fishing activity.

Taking her turn at the minister's press briefing in Accra, the Minister of Fisheries and  Aquaculture Development, Mavis Hawa Koomson, said the ministry had put in place some new measures to combat illegal fishing.

Measures

Some of the measures, she said, included the implementation of a ministerial directive on specifications in trawl gear to reduce the catch of juvenile fishes and bycatches.

Also, Mrs Koomson said trawl vessels had been directed to be at sea for not more than 30 days for their fishing expedition.

Additionally, the minister said the ministry had commenced the deployment of the Electronic Monitoring System (EMS) on three trawl vessels this year for a pilot phase with plans to extend the EMS initiative to cover all trawlers and tuna vessels by 2025.

The EMS has a video recorder, a camera and Global Positioning System (GPS) to record fishing activities at sea 24 hours throughout the week.

The Fisheries sector, Mrs Koomson stressed, was being threatened by the depletion or decline of fish stocks as seen by low catches confirmed by fishers in recent surveys.

The decline in fish catches could be attributed to many factors, including climate change, marine pollution by plastics, Illegal, IUU fishing, excessive fishing pressure and overfishing, the minister added.

To save the fishing industry from collapsing, Mrs Koomson said experts had recommended the implementation of drastic measures, including closed fishing season.

The implementation of the closed fishing season, which is enshrined in the Fisheries Act, is to ensure the recovery and rebuilding of depleted fish stocks to avoid the collapse of the fishing industry.

Section 84 of the Fisheries Act, 2002 (Act 625) empowers the Ministry and the Fisheries Commission to declare a Closed Fishing Season.

Except for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the closed fishing season has been implemented in Ghana from 2016 to 2022.

The objectives for the implementation of the closed fishing season, Mrs Hawa Koomson said, apart from reducing overfishing and high fishing pressure, had included recovering overexploited fish stocks; rebuilding depleted fish stocks and replenishing dwindling fish stocks.

Describing it as a fish stock recovery strategy, she said experts from the Scientific and Technical Working Group of the Sustainable Fisheries Management Project had recommended that the closed fishing season should be implemented between July and September, which would coincide with the spawning period of the fish stocks.

Implementing the closed fishing season during that period, she said, ensured that the fish spawns at least once in its lifetime before being caught by the fishers.

2013 Fishing close season

For the past two years, Mrs Koomson said the closed fishing season had been implemented between July and August.

For this year, she announced that the season would be observed by the canoe and inshore fishers between July 1 and 31 while industrial trawlers would also observe it from July 1 to August 31.

Following consultations, Mrs Koomson said Cote d’Ivoire would implement their closed fishing season within the same period as Ghana.

"This will reduce the likelihood of fishers from Ghana migrating to fish in our neighbouring country," she said.

Next year, she said, Togo, Benin and Liberia would come on board.

Alternative livelihood

To reduce pressure on the fisheries resources, Mrs Koomson said, the ministry and its partners, including the Ghana Fisheries Recovery Activity, had launched the alternative livelihood training support for fishers.

 Total of 550 fishers, who will be the initial beneficiaries, would be trained in masonry, carpentry, dressmaking, hairdressing, electronics and auto engineering, among others.

The beneficiaries are drawn from selected communities along the coast and there were plans to scale up the training to cover 8,000 fishers.