Nii Ashitey Odamtey II, Tema Chief Fisherman has called on fishermen and Ghanaians to adopt positive attitudes that would help preserve and conserve the ocean for future generations.
He said the ocean had been the major source of income, solving unemployment problems, oxygen among others, and any activity that would lead to the destruction of the ocean must be abolished.
Nii Odamtey, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Tema after a beach clean-up exercise organized by Pioneering Food Cannery (PFC), explained that ocean preservation was key in resisting global climate challenges.
He said it was one of the environmental concerns affecting the world at large adding that the injury of the ocean was also damaging to animal protein essential to human health, loss of jobs linked to the oceans, and others.
“The ocean feeds about 3.7 million people globally and if we cannot cater for the ocean, then we are doing harm to ourselves,” the Tema Chief Fisherman stated.
The Tema Chief Fisherman indicated that the preservation of marine life did not only have to do with replacing the fish population, but also mitigating human activities such as pollution, habitat destructions, overfishing, and a lot more.
Nii Odamtey explained that aquatic lives would be lost due to indiscriminate human activities on land including the disposal of plastic waste into the ocean.
“When it rains and you stand around the Chemu Lagoon, you will see the lagoon carrying a lot of plastics into the sea,” he said.
He called on the stakeholders to provide all the necessary tools for the implementation of the Operation Clean your Frontage initiative to reduce the rate at which people deposited industrial and domestic waste into water bodies.
By Elizabeth Larkwor Baah, GNA
