Corporate Social Responsibility Movement (CSRM), a civil society organisation, on Thursday called on government to pass laws to ban paired-trawling in the country's marine waters.
The CSRM, committed to the interest of fishermen, said mere verbal pronouncements that the practice is banned is not enough to deter the perpetrators, hence the need for punitive measures to be put in place.
Speaking at a news conference in Accra on the challenges facing the fishing industry, Mr Richster Nii Amarfio, Executive Secretary of the CSRM said the paired-trawling method was depleting the marine waters of fish stock.
Mr Amarfio, who was flanked by the chief fishermen from Tema and Prampram, said the problems associated with premix fuel, use of undersize mesh net, oil exploration and dysfunctional Fisheries Commission, must also be addressed to give life to the fishing industry.
He said the use of light aggregating methods to catch fish had assumed a high dimension thereby causing the extinction of the old-age cast net method which provided livelihood for many small scale fishermen.
On the use of inferior size mesh, which was prohibited by the Fisheries Act 625, for causing the landing of fingerlings and destroying the breeding grounds of fish, he said the solution did not lie in an outright ban of the practice.
Mr Amarfio said a regulatory mechanism should be put in place to ensure that fishes of specific sizes were not landed.
He said government should take immediate steps to get the oil exploratory companies to safeguard life and property without interfering with fishing activities in their operational areas.
Mr Amarfio asked government to reconstitute the Fisheries Commission to enable members to assist the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to work effectively.