Mr Richster Nii Armah Amarfio, the Executive Director of the Blue Economy and Governance Consult, a leading consultancy specialising in ocean sustainability, says it is now mandatory for fisheries observers to acquire basic life-saving skills before boarding a vessel.
Fisheries observers are trained by the Fisheries Enforcement Unit of Ghana and deployed on Ghanaian-flagged trawlers as a measure to curb illegalities committed during fishing and collect data that cannot be otherwise captured using monitoring devices.
Ghana has recorded in recent times the disappearance of two fisheries observers, Samuel Abayateye, assigned to a Ghana-flagged tuna fishing vessel in October 2023, and Emmanuel Essien, on board a trawler in 2019.
The Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), is therefore ensuring that the crew of a vessel, including the fisheries observers, go through some mandatory safety training before embarking on the vessel to ensure their safety and security.
All observers that were boarded recently went through the basic training to learn how to survive at sea, Mr Amarfio, also the Vice President of the National Fisheries Association of Ghana, told to the Ghana News Agency in an interview on Wednesday.
“So, this time around, we have observers going through the basic survival training to be able to fit into the system. They spend the whole period with the vessel at sea, so they need that protection, because whatever happens to the vessel will happen to them…” he said.
The Regional Maritime University had introduced some subsidies for companies to pay less to train their crews, he said.
The tuna sector is also ensuring that the fishers and observers go through the five mandatories to be properly trained and at least adhere to all the safety measures on the vessel.
The five mandatories include knowledge of firefighting and safe use of equipment at sea.
Mr Amarfio said it was impossible to call in the fire service to douse a fire outbreak when at sea, hence the need for training on firefighting as well as ensuring the safe use of equipment.
An observer must also know to swim, stating that: “You need to be able to at least swim to save yourself in case of an accident.”
Touching on calls by stakeholders for an update on the state of investigations into the two missing fisheries observers, he said the responsibility lay on the state as the companies involved had availed their crew members for an investigation into the issue.
“That is the best the companies could do; the state institutions should establish what happened and make it public,” he stated.
