The Gowri Fish Farming Group on Wednesday expressed its preparedness to fully embrace fish cage farming as an alternative livelihood initiative to support regular earnings of its members.

They group said it was beneficial to spend less time and effort feeding and monitoring fish in the cage so as to get a good harvest than to do wild fishing, which yielded low harvest. Mr Abu Jamel, the Secretary of the group, made this known after the group had harvested its first batch of cage tilapia reared for six months on the Vea reservoir at Gowrie in the Bongo District.

“This is far profitable, reliable and convenient than the traditional way of fishing which, we often end up not getting fish after sailing for a whole day,” he said. The fish farming initiative is part of 16 similar facilities built on selected dam reservoirs in the Northern and Upper East regions under the food security and environmental facility project.

It is being implemented by the Water Resources Institute of the Council for Industrial Research (WRI-CSIR) with funding from the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development through the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.

Mr Etornyo Agbeko, project coordinator, explained that the initiative sought to support community members to embrace fish farming and increase fish production using the existing water resources. He said it was also to enable the group to enrich the dietary supplement of its family members and to generate extra income from the sale of the fish.

Mr Abeko said through the project, trees and grass had been planted around the dams to help protect the water. He said to sustain the project a revolving fund had been instituted where some of the proceeds from the sale of the excess fish would be lodged to enable members of the group to borrow from mainly to support individual fish rearing.