As part of measures to curtail accidents at sea among artisanal fishers, the Canoe and Fishing Gear Owners Association of Ghana (CAFGOAG) and the Ghana Meteorological Agency have organised a day’s training for community information centre operators.
The operators, drawn from fishing communities in the Volta and Greater Accra Regions, received training on the dissemination of weather and ocean state information to fishers.
Mr. Joseph Tetteh Purtophy, the Deputy Director, Synoptic Meteorology and Forecasting at the Ghana Meteorological Agency, who led the training, took the participants through the various aspects of the weather information.
Mr. Purtophy advised information centre operators to understand every bit of information issued by the marine unit of the Ghana Meteorological Agency.
He stressed that failure to understand the information would lead to them churning out misinformed parameters, which could be dangerous to the fishermen who would depend on it to go to sea.
Nana Kweigyah, the President
of CAFGOAG, said the purpose of the training was to improve the availability, accessibility, and usability of weather and ocean state information, among members of fishing communities as part of an effort to promote safety at sea in Ghana’s artisanal fisheries sector.
He said that with the training, Community Information Centre operators would be better prepared to interpret and announce weather forecasts and weather warnings, as well as ocean state information, without sensationalising the messages.
He indicated that the association had been engaging canoe owners in the past and realising the challenges with the flow of information to the fishing crews, it decided to extend the engagement to the communities to reach more local stakeholders through the community information centres.
‘It is expected that not only fishing crews will have access to weather and ocean state information with this intervention, but their families, including their wives and children, and in some cases, their parents and other comm
unity members who can influence the decision to go to sea or not,’ he added.
In 2023, some accidents were recorded among artisanal fishermen and canoe operators at sea and on major water bodies, especially the Volta Lake, which led to deaths and damage to canoes.
Such accidents were mostly linked to bad weather conditions such as storms and strong waves.
Source: Ghana News Agency