Plenty of fishermen, not so many fish

Share on Facebook StumbleUpon Add to Reddit Print Version Email Article

Ghana's fishermen struggle as large foreign trawlers scoop up fish along the ocean floor.

By Drew Hinshaw — Special to GlobalPost

Published: June 29, 2009 05:33 ET

JAMESTOWN, Ghana — The life of Ofori Muhammad, a 52-year-old fisherman in the port of Jamestown, would be idyllic if it were a bit more lucrative.

At dawn, the devout Muslim lands ashore, prays, spends his mid-mornings stitching an endless latticework of nylon net, packs in a few naps, then pushes out to sea at midnight to do it again, as he has for 38 years.

But out there, at night, he sees the enemy: enormous foreign ships trawling the ocean floor with eerie underwater lights that bewilder fish. Their nets — 200 meters wide — sweep the ocean floor cleaner than the hand-sewn nets the men at Jamestown spend their mornings mending.

With deep sea scanners, the trawlers hunt schools of fish across Africa's western coastline, hoisting new flags as they cross invisible borders.

“Wherever fish are in West Africa, they chase after them,” said Chairman Daniel Eli of Foodspan, a food issues advocacy group. “From Guinea to the Ivory Coast, anything goes.”

There are signs, however, that there's not much left to chase. Back in Jamestown, grizzled fishermen remember their glory years when they'd pass only a few days a week at sea. Now, most spend all seven days in their canoes, returning to shore with fewer, smaller and younger fish.

“Here we can't catch anything,” said Odartei Mills, a 47-year-old fisherman. “So we go as far as Abidjan.”

Others have been sailing outward, deep into West Africa's stormy Atlantic, which in rainy season tosses wooden boats through a spin cycle. This time last year, two of the men working Mills' dock sailed off into a storm like that.

“They didn't come back,” he said.

If there's a meat that binds together the hundreds of culturally and ethnically distinct societies in West Africa, it's fish, the major and most affordable source of protein for gastronomes as far north as the parched Sahel.

For millions of family businesses, it is also the primary source of income. Ghana's government estimates that 2.2 million of its 23 million citizens are directly dependent on fishermen. Another two or three million Ghanaians rely on fish traders, truck drivers, boat repairmen and manufacturers who work on the fringes of the fish industry.

Comments:

2 Comments.

Posted by david wayne osedach on June 29, 2009 20:27 ET

Over fishing is a world-wide problem like climate change. It just keeps getting worse...

Posted by mondcivitano on December 30, 2009 15:26 ET

Dear David Wayne Biel/Bienne, Switzerland 30.12.2009

I myself have made the same experience, since I put my feet 1998 for the first time on Ghana soil – I spent 2 years in Ghana with my Ghana wife – and considered along the years as passionate sailor and fisher during fishing tours with the fishermen on dugout Canoes, that the caught fish became smaller & smaller.
I lived 4 years in Denmark, were sailing every weekend & learned how to construct and to sail Viking boat. It’s just amazing to sail a Viking boat! Now I saw that this type of boat would be the solution for the fishermen. It is sailing 3 x faster than the Canoes can reach 3 times longer distances and 9 time larger fishing area, have noticed without noise bad smell and economically just with wind driven.
The multifunctional boat is 11.2m long 2.5m width 0.5m depth under full load can be used for the purpose of
A) Fishing
B) Tourism
There will not come more fish in short term but attractive adventure tourism could be established in relative short time, some years. The necessary measure will claim first of all a lot of “working together” for a bigger more successfully goal, than Africans are able to shoulder for a long term sustainable project.
My Claim is to change all concerned groups in this project for Adventure Tourism and train them and make them aware about the importance of perfect collaboration and say consciously good bye to “good old Baby egoism” behavior with all their side effects of jealousy, envy but to change to positive habits of trustworthiness, reliability, punctuality to have the basic for success.
That is nothing less than a new AERA in the Ghana society. But I think the group of fishermen is well suited, they are bound to the nature’s physical laws, they are not so strong misguided of superstition. This could be changed by support of a faculty of an University associated to teacher’s education or sociology.
Meanwhile I could get in touch with a long term operating foundation. Their President Daniel Bez lives in Biel and got in touch with me, when he read a short article in the local Biel-Bienne papers.
Daniel offered to me, that I could live in his old building in Winneba, there he has also connection to the City Chief and also the Chief of the fisherman Union and last not least there is a University who educate teachers!! My wood working tool machines were in security.
I wanted to start my journey by motorbike from here to Ghana along the West coast of Africa from Tanger to Dakar. Than f I have to leave the dangerous shore south from Dakar crossing Mali and Burkina Faso, to Ghana. My pension insurance told me that as a foreigner I cannot leave Switzerland for longer than 3 month or they will cut my pay. From Germany I receive also a part of payment they told me to cut down my pension 33% if I leave Europe to live: I don’t now what DK is telling me.
But this is the world. And since I lived in Ghana 12 years ago, I continuously are on some projects and finance them always myself. That’s the reason that I cannot just go!
I have now a little depth of 5000 CHF and need another 5000 CHF for the journey to Ghana and retour in 3 Month. My webside gives you more details www.africa-sailing.com not yet all is translated. I’m working all alone, capacity question.
Best greetings & Happy New year Holger Siebers holger.siebers@gmail.com 0041789131982 mobile