Climate Change and Fishing activities

 By: Boako Eugenia Nhyira Nyamekye

Photo credit: Boako Eugenia Nhyira Nyamekye
The figure shows fishermen pulling their nets off their boats after fishing all day.

According to the Marine Stewardship Council, fishing activities is one of the major contributor to reducing poverty and food scarcity in the world. A study by Brange and Perry 2010 showed that fishing contributes to creating over 100 million employment across the globe   Climate change generally causes overfishing, habitat degradation, pollution amongst others.

Fishing activities in Ghana contribute two-thirds of the country's fish food production and employ up to 2 million of the Ghanaian citizens according to a research done by the SSA. However, many fish stocks are close to collapse
or completely collapsed due to the high climate changes across the globe. Climate change has affected and is still having an impact on fishing activities as well as the fish food security of the world.

According to a research done by the risk assessment team on assessing the vulnerability of Ghanaian fishes as a result of climate change in 2010, the findings proved that some species that constitute the highest catches in Ghana are highly affected by the climate changes having an effect on their habitat. Areas in Ghana most affected by this is the communities along the coastal planes of Ghana but the Volta region is most affected and the least affected is the Greater Accra region, areas such as the Central region and Western Coastal are moderately affected.

The ocean today has become relatively warmer, the pH has become lower, dissolved oxygen in the ocean has also decreased, rise in sea levels, decreased oxygen circulation and the increase in the circulation of carbon dioxide in the ocean all these are as a result of climate change. Climate change has replications mostly on the coastal communities as they depend mainly on fishing for their livelihood, survival and food security.

Urama and Ozor (2010) conducted a research that proved that women in Cameroon have resorted to hunting tadpoles and frogs rather than fishes this is due to the fact that there are no longer fishes in the Bangwa river. Although these women are only interested in their source of food, it was however being noticed that these frogs and tadpoles are also getting extinct in the rivers as the rivers get warmer and warmer by the day due to climate effects.

The impact of climate change on fishing activities is dependent on how well the community is able to adapt to the changing dynamics in the climate, that is for the community to look at other means of survival and not lay idle doing nothing. (Mendendal et al., 2020)

Photo credit: Boako Eugenia Nhyira Nyamekye
A picture of some fishmongers and ordinary people waiting for the fishermen to bring their catch for purchasing.