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The Daily Graphic's report of a poor annual fish harvest this season and the paper's subsequent interviews with key players in the industry on the problem of the so-called pair trawling, as one of the leading causes of the depletion of fish stocks in Ghana's waters, is an example of good development journalism from an investigative perspective.

The Fisheries Ministry has rightly argued that dwindling fish harvests are a global problem induced by environmental, climatic and economic factors.

The Daily Graphic last Saturday quoted Dr Francis Nunoo of the University of Ghana Department of Oceanography and Fisheries as attributing the dwindling fish harvests partly to Ghanaians' craving for the popular “Keta School Boys (fingerlings).

Fingerlings or 'baby fish' are a necessary fisheries regenerative resource as they are food for larger fish and should not be eaten by fish consumers on the present scale, the marine scientist explained.

To worsen matters, the scientist indicated, local fishermen were also engaged in bad fishing practices.

Poor sanitation and environmental practices in coastal areas were further compounding the problem of decreasing fish harvests.

While these arguments are valid, they ignore or at least seem to downplay the importance of the argument raised by local canoe fishermen and marine environmentalists about the very efficient but also very destructive impact of modern fishing technologies being used by foreign fishing companies in our waters:

While Dr Nunoo may be right in attributing declining catches partly to bad fishing practices employed by local fishermen, many fishermen and fisheries researchers have blamed the problem of bad fishing practices on the depletion of fish stock by large foreign trawlers in the first place.

According to one tropical fisheries study, “decreased fish catches (in West Africa) have resulted in increasing poverty of fisher folk and local fishermen have therefore resorted to the use of larger nets, and mesh sizes less than one inch, to harvest juveniles (Keta school boys).

They also use explosives and chemicals to be able to catch a lot of fish.”

Last week, Graphic reporter Rose Hayford Darko and cameramen Sam Adano went to the beach in Tema and spent some time with fishermen seated in their boats.

Like the fishermen Jesus would later recruit to his ministry, they had returned from sea without a catch.

Unlike Jesus's friends, the local fishermen had “launched out into the deep and let down the nets”, without a catch.

Simultaneously, reporters Kofi Yeboah and Moses Aklorbortu spoke to fishermen along the coasts of Accra, Axim and Takoradi.

Almost to a man, the fishermen agreed that the depletion of fish stocks by foreign trawlers was responsible for the fast declining catches and this year's poor harvest.

The evidence that pair trawling is one of the main causes, if not the leading cause, of our dwindling fish stocks, is overwhelming:  Continued    Source: DAILY GRAPHIC - Daily Graphic

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