It was 10:00 hours on a Saturday morning and artisanal fishers in a coastal town of Abandze, on the West coast of Ghana are seated patiently under their sheds waiting for the rains with strong wind to recede so they could embark on their fishing expedition.
Fish processors and traders also sit on their aluminum basins at the shore hoping same. According to the fishers, the sudden weather changes is making it difficult for them to go to sea as often as they should.
Jacob Otabil is the chief fisherman at Oshiyie, a fishing community in Accra. With over 25 years of fishing experience, Jacob admits that a lot has changed in the fishing business. He complains about the changes in the seasons. Jacob mentioned for instance that, “there are seasons where everybody knows that from August-September, there is usually a bumper harvest”. According to him, in the late 2000s, things had changed drastically in the sense that expected bumper harvest have declined.
“Last year, we were expecting the harmattan to start in early January but it did not come. This year too, the harmattan started just last two weeks which is in March. This has never happened before”, says Jacob.
He explained that “usually, the harmattan starts in early January, at times we will experience it from December but in early January, it becomes very high. When it happens, you either cannot go to sea or when you go, you will not get anything. The climate has changed totally”, he added.
Historically, Ghanaian artisanal fishers predict weather changes using traditional methods such as putting their feet in the sand and observing the clouds to forecast the weather changes. Today, applying such traditional methods are gradually proving to be obsolete in the face of a rapidly changing climate. As a result, fishers keep making huge losses from tidal waves and other extreme weather conditions brought about by climate change.