Charting a safer course for marine mammals, one data point at a time.
The establishment of the Ghana Marine Mammal Network commenced in 2018 and was finally operationalised in 2022. The network, which was started with four members currently has a membership of thirty-six, drawn from the academia (University of Cape Coast and University of Ghana), state actors (Fisheries Commission and the Ghana Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission), NGO (Fiends of the Nation), community volunteers, the media and a freelance cetacean expert based in Senegal.
Our mission
The network also incorporates a diversity of skilled expertise, involving fisheries scientists, cetacean biologists, Information Technology (IT) experts, GIS and Remote sensing experts, graduate students and fishermen. This offers the network a pool of experts and resources for implementing its activities. A majority of the members are Field Technical Officers (FTOs) of the Fisheries Commission stationed at the fish landing sites along the coast whose daily schedule involves collecting fisheries data.
Upon establishing the network, trainings were organised to develop and enhance the capacity of members of the network on basic cetacean data collection covering photographic documentation for identification purposes, identification using keys and morphological features, morphometric measurements, sex determination, scoring the state of freshness and decomposition of carcasses in case of stranding, and fishing gear identification and measurements.
The trainings were facilitated by the cetacean biologists and fisheries scientists from the University of Ghana, the University of Cape Coast and the freelance cetacean expert based in Senegal, all members of the network.
- Reporting every 120 hours
- Over 300 reported
- Funding
- $10 thousands
- Species
- 18
