On Dec 4th, 1-2 PM UTC, Kwame Agyekum will address the challenges in the fisheries sector with EO

Kwame Agyekum is a marine remote sensing scientist at the University of Ghana and Co-Chair of the Geo Blue Planet will address the challenges in the fisheries sector with Earth Observation. The moderator will be José Luís Melo, CEO of XSEALENCE – Sea Technologies




There are concerted efforts involving many coastal states, regional institutions and global bodies to develop and improve existing initiatives that focus on reducing the depletion of fisheries resources and marine biodiversity, promoting marine ecosystem health and safeguarding lives at sea. These strategies are most needed in many developing coastal nations and islands that are plagued with myriad of challenges that ultimately prevents them from realising the societal benefits the ocean offers. Weak political structure, poorly resourced institutions, inadequate capacity to utilize technology and geospatial data, among others, remains the bane of many of the public and private sector institutions that have the mandate to ensure sustainable use of the ocean.

The University of Ghana, through the EU/AU funded Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) & Africa project is supporting coastal states in West Africa to utilize Earth Observation data derived from space-borne sensors to support fisheries management efforts. By engaging with policy-makers, issues relating to changes in ocean processes and its impact on fish distribution, threats posed by illegal fishing and environmental destructions from spills at sea are being mitigated by employing geospatial technologies. This talk will provide some insights on the how satellite imaging is being used in planning monitoring and surveillance campaigns of industrial fishing fleets, generating key fishing effort indices, and providing periodic information of the state of the ocean to artisanal fishermen to reduce accidents at sea.

Dr. Kwame Adu Agyekum obtained his PhD degree from the University of Ghana in 2016. Kwame has keen interest in using marine EO data for fisheries management as well as in maritime security and safety. His work at the University of Ghana largely focuses on developing coastal and marine services to support monitoring, control and surveillance activities of coastal states in western Africa to curb IUU fishing using various in-situ, modelled and space-borne information such as fishing vessel traffic information from Automatic Identification System (AIS), ocean colour and other remote sensing data, and forecast products from Mercator Ocean to develop potential fishing zone maps to support fisheries management activities in West Africa.


Source: Jose Luiz Moutinho <jose.moutinho@aircentre.org>, The Networking Friday
More information here.
XSEALENCE – Sea Technologies









Comments

Top 10 most viewed articles