Marine Conservation Gov’t to introduce marine protected areas

The Head of Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Doris Yeboah has announced that government has taken steps to establish marine protected areas (MPA) at Cape 3 Points in the Western region -where shes will go there and have some respite from work of artisanal sherfolks.

Speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the launch of the National Blue Economy Summit in Accra, she indicated that the idea for having marine protected area is to replenish depleting stocks. She said ”There are areas that have rules of no take, you can’t take anything from there -they are protected so that the marine life there will rejuvenate and go back into the system, so you declare an area that this you can’t do anything there for sh to grow, just replenish the stock of the ocean, so it is a standard tool, measure that is done in many countries, we

By Eugene Davis

are now starting, we have done some studies, they are going on in the Western region.

On whether the ministry would push for a ban on plastics, she said “It is action that has to be taken by partners, there is already a plastic work that is being done by partners in the plastic space, so they are going to be able to say whether we need a ban or whatever it is. I don’t know what the plastic coalition is thinking now but I guess from their informed position, when they come up with an issue, we would go for it because it is really a ecting our stakeholders.”

A marine protected area (MPA) is a section of the ocean where a government has placed limits on human activity. Many MPAs allow people to use the area in ways that do not damage the environment. Some ban shing. A few do not allow people to enter the area at all.

MPAs are established because the ocean and the things that live in it face many dangers. Threats to the ocean include over shing, litter, water pollution, and global climate change. These threats have caused a decline in the population of many sh, marine mammals, and other sea creatures.

Marine protected areas can have many di erent names, including marine parks, marine conservation zones, marine reserves, marine sanctuaries, and no-take zones. More than 5,000 MPAs have been established around the world. Together, they cover 0.8 percent of the ocean.

The main focus of many MPAs is to protect marine habitats and the variety of life that they support. Some MPAs focus on conserving historic sites such as shipwrecks.

Other MPAs are established in order to ensure that resources are sustainable—that they will not run out.