Ghana has made a landmark commitment to roll out full transparency for industrial fisheries within its EEZ by 2025, pledging to deploy camera systems, remote sensors and Electronic Monitoring Systems to monitor fishing activities and collect data.
‘As the first West African nation to commit to 100% monitoring of all industrial fishing vessels, my administration is taking a bold position to improve the transparency of fishing activity,’ said Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development Mavis Hawa Koomson.
‘This will contribute to our aim to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in Ghana. This will support our continuing efforts to provide a stable source of employment and livelihood to millions of Ghanaians who rely on our fisheries for domestic and international markets – for this to be sustained we must manage resources responsibly and stop overfishing. Our hope is that this commitment will chart a new course towards better management in Ghana and inspire our neighbouring African fishing nations to make transformative commitments as well.’
The Republic of Ghana received a second yellow card warning in 2021 from the European Commission due to shortfalls in its fisheries management.
By increasing transparency over the operations of the industrial fishing sector through the deployment of EMS, Ghana can address what is seen as one of the major drivers of overfishing – illegal catch, and transshipment at sea of small pelagic species by closely monitoring compliance of these vessels with the nation’s rules and regulations. The EMS is also expected to reduce labour abuses on board the vessels and provide vessel owners and seafood processors with valuable on-board operational data that can inform business operations.
Thai Union, one of the world’s leading seafood producers, with processing operations in Ghana, has previously committed to 100% ‘on-the-water’ monitoring of its international tuna supply chain by 2025.
‘Thai Union fully supports the Minister’s leadership in fisheries transparency and dedication to turning commitment into action. We fully support this commitment and have already been working on this in collaboration with the fishing vessels that we source from in Ghana,’ said Tony Lazazzara, Group Director of Global Fish Procurement at Thai Union.
Ghana’s Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (MOFAD) anticipates working with industry partners to trial EMS on industrial trawl vessels in 2023 through the Feed the Future Ghana Fisheries Recovery Activity, a project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and supported by the Nature Conservancy. Using the results from the trials, MOFAD will scale up EMS to all licensed industrial vessels operating in Ghana’s waters by 2025.
