The Minister for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Elizabeth Afoley Quaye has said some fishermen are requesting for an extension of the closed season due to the positive outcome of the exercise.
Speaking at this years’ TALKPLAST conference on plastic waste and marine litter, the Minister said her comment was based on feedback from some fisherfolk.
“We have observed a very successful close season and the media can attest to it that the fishermen, after resuming fishing on 15 of June, have caught a lot of fish. I have had a lot of calls from fishermen who say that they would have wished to have, not one month but a two-month close season,” she said.
As the one-month closed-season for artisanal fishermen across the country ended on June 15th, the expectation is that the Ministry for Fisheries and Aquaculture, which implemented the ban, may come up with a technical assessment to analyze the impact of the exercise.
But it does not appear that anything like that would take place.
Nonetheless, the Minister, Elizabeth Naa Afoley Quaye, has said the exercise has been successful in reaction to claims of poor catch by some fishermen at the James Town Fishing Harbour in Accra.
Some fisherfolk at Jamestown in the Greater Accra Region said they were getting reduced harvests, which they blamed on the closed season.
The government this year banned fishing for one month from May to June as part of measures to regenerate the country’s depleted fish stock.
But the fishermen claimed that since the end of the ban, they only catch plastics in addition to small amounts of fish.
“We don’t get any catch. When we go fishing, all you come out with is a net full of plastic waste. We return and sit idle without any source of income to feed our families. We have been going for the past three days but we are getting nothing,” one fisherman said.
But there has been some positive news after the closed season in places like Ngyerisia fishing bay near Sekondi where fishermen say they have been impressed with their catches since the reopening of the fishing season.
