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More Than Income Alone: The Anlo-Ewe Beach Seine Fishery in Ghana

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Poverty Mosaics: Realities and Prospects in Small-Scale Fisheries

Abstract

Ghanaian artisanal fisheries have dominated the West African coastal region for over 100 years. Due to natural conditions (upwelling) in the Gulf of Guinea, Ghanaian fishers have long been migrating to follow the fish. While migrating, they spread their technical knowledge of boat building and fishing, as well as knowledge of management institutions to other coastal communities. Fish stocks in West Africa – and in Ghana – are now in crisis. Due to declining catches, the contributions that fisheries make to poverty reduction are becoming threatened. This chapter describes the history and current situation of the Anlo-Ewe beach seine fishers, one of the coastal ethnic groups involved in fishing. This chapter presents four main findings: (1) fishing in West Africa is not always a last resort activity – which has often been suggested; (2) artisanal fisheries have been very profitable; (3) fisheries mean more to fishers than earning money – it is a way of life; and (4) policies aimed at providing “alternative” livelihoods for fishers to solve problems of resource scarcity are likely to be unsuccessful. This chapter concludes by pointing out how the inclusion of strong artisanal fisheries in fisheries governance is crucial for preventing stock depletion and growing poverty.

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Notes

  1. 1.

     I will use the concepts of artisanal and small-scale fisheries interchangeably. Both concepts have their own connotations (see Johnson 2006). With these concepts, I refer to the sub-sector in Ghana using canoes (or even only nets such as cast nets) for their fishing operations. The artisanal or small-scale subsector stands opposed to the (semi-)industrial sector.

  2. 2.

     In 1996, Ghana had a GDP of US$6.9 billion. http://devdata.worldbank.org/AAG/gha_aag.pdf [Accessed date: September 2008].

  3. 3.

    http://www.fao.org/fishery/countrysector/FI-CP_GH/en [Accessed date: March 2009].

  4. 4.

    http://www.sflp.org/briefs/eng/flyer.pdf.

  5. 5.

     For more information, see www.sflp.org.

  6. 6.

    http://www.fao.org/fishery/countrysector/FI-CP_GH/en [Accessed date: July 2008].

  7. 7.

     From the literature, Malthusian overfishing (as Pauly (2006) has called it) can be recognized in Senegal (De Vries 2003; Pinnegar and Engelhard 2008).

  8. 8.

     Since the 1980s, Ghana has been pursuing an export-diversification strategy of development with a greater emphasis on the non-traditional export sector. Non-traditional exports are agricultural, processed and semi-processed, and handicraft products. In Ghana, fish is one of these, and then mostly tuna, shrimps, lobsters, and prawns (Addo and Marshal 2000).

  9. 9.

    http://www.fao.org/fishery/countrysector/FI-CP_GH/en [Accessed date: March 2009].

  10. 10.

     CFA Franc – CFA stands for Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community). Currency used in (amongst others) the neighboring countries of Ghana – Benin, Togo, and the Ivory Coast.

  11. 11.

     Beach seines in Ghana catch quite a lot of garbage, consisting mainly of plastic bags that have been blown into the sea or washed into the sea via the open gutters and sewage system.

  12. 12.

    www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y3274E/y3274e09.htm [Accessed date: January 2009].

  13. 13.

    A ban was suggested when a new Demersal Fisheries Management Plan was drawn up (Yeboah 2002). See Chap. 6 in Kraan (2009) on how difficult it is to implement the by-laws in the Keta district (Volta Region) due to the power of net owners at the local level, let alone ban the beach seine.

  14. 14.

     Sharing systems in fishing companies differ. Some share in three parts, others in five parts. The way these parts are then divided among the workers differs. In general, the effect of sharing in three or in five parts is that, if shared in five parts, the crew gets a relatively larger part.

  15. 15.

     The financial returns are different for net owners and crew members. The net owners get a large part of the catch, but they also have to reinvest part of it in the business. The canoe, net, and motor all need to be maintained continuously, and crew members should always be able to arrange a loan with net owners, although net owners also use the financial returns as income.

  16. 16.

     See also the critique of Jul-Larsen (1994, pp. 13–18).

  17. 17.

     This viewpoint is shared by the international NGO International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), which was erected in 1984 out of concern for too much attention for the commercial, industrial, scientific, and fishery resource aspects at the expense of “the actual real-world, life-and-blood people involved in fishing worldwide fishworkers who are often sections of the population marginalized from mainstream society” (http://icsf.net/icsf2006/jspFiles/icsfMain/about/english/aboutIcsf.jsp[Accessed date: Jan 2009]).

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Svein Jentoft and Maria-Victoria Gunnarsdottir for their constructive comments. Thanks also to the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Amsterdam for funding the research. Gratitude to the Norwegian Research Council for funding the PovFish project.

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  1. Centre for Maritime Research (MARE), Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Marloes Kraan

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  1. Marloes Kraan
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Correspondence to Marloes Kraan .

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  1. , Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, 9037, Norway

    Svein Jentoft

  2. , Norwegian College of Fisheries Science, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway

    Arne Eide

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Kraan, M. (2011). More Than Income Alone: The Anlo-Ewe Beach Seine Fishery in Ghana. In: Jentoft, S., Eide, A. (eds) Poverty Mosaics: Realities and Prospects in Small-Scale Fisheries. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1582-0_8

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