Only God can prevent fishes from dying – Hawa Koomson

The Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture has admitted that the incidents of fish being washed ashore are only natural and cannot be averted through any specific measures.

In the Ministry’s estimation, all it can do is to investigate circumstances leading to the fish kills, since the phenomenon is natural.

One may recall that in April 2021, fish were found along the shores of the Osu Castle beach in Accra.

Melon-headed whales were also washed ashore at the Axim-Bewire beach in the Nzema East Municipality in the Western Region within the same period.

Preliminary investigations by the Fisheries Commission into the incident indicated that stress factors caused the deaths .

The Sector Minister, Mavis Hawa Koomson believes the only means by which such unfortunate situations could be prevented from recurring is through divine intervention.

“We all know that this is a natural occurrence. There’s nothing we can do about it unless the creator himself decides to do the correction. We cannot do the correction”, she said at the Ministry of Information meet the press series on Sunday.

The Minister added that; “ours is to find out and so the investigation was done to know what exactly the problem is. If it is a natural occurrence, there’s nothing we can do”.

According to Hawa Koomson, the phenomenon is global and not only peculiar to Ghana, as it has occurred in other countries.

“At that time, it wasn’t only in Ghana; other countries also experienced it. So, for example, Mexico also experienced the same thing. So it’s a natural occurrence, and there is nothing we can do, but we only know the causes of the kills”, she said.

Some stress factors for aquatic life are affected by pollution, diet, water quality, population density. water temperature, among others.

“Our initial investigations have proven that the fishes died as a result of some stress factors. For the [exact] stress factors, we are still investigating,” Head of Fish Health Unit at the Fisheries Commission, Dr. Peter Zedah said.

“Whether they were poisonous or not, we cannot tell because the other people are doing some pesticide testing.”

At the time, the Fisheries Commission said it was sending the gills and the kidneys of the dead fish for histopathological analysis.

“When that one [the histopathological analysis] comes, we can say it is confirmatory but for now, the fishes were stressed, and they came [out].”

The assessment showed that the fishes washed ashore “looked good, so it gives you the impression that maybe some environmental factors may have caused their death.”