Assessment of Fishers' Knowledge and Willingness to Adopt Seaweed Cultivation in Ghana in Relation to Gender, Age, Education, and Distance

Introduction

The marine fish stock in Ghana has continued to decline due to the combined effect of overfishing and intrusive seaweeds. The consequences of these have had a significant impact on Ghana 's fish production, making the fishing-based livelihoods precarious. (Lazar et al. 2017). According to Zaney & Amankwa (2018), a reduction in fish stocks in the sea may force fishermen to seek alternative livelihoods, Particularly from already degraded land, through the indiscriminate harvesting of trees from protected areas for the production of firewood and charcoal. However, the attempt by the Government of Ghana in 2018 to temporarily ban fishing for a while in order to rejuvenate fish stocks in the sea did not go well with fishermen whose daily livelihood depends on fishing. (Ghanaweb, 2018).

Sustaining and improving livelihoods in fishing communities requires diversification strategies that call for 'open eyes' to make use of open sea space for agriculture, hence the introduction of seaweed cultivation. Seaweed is grown for domestic use, industrial use and for ecological purposes. For example, hydrocolloids such as carrageenans, agar and alginates are extracted from dried algae to produce binding agents and emulsifiers in the industrial sector. Seaweed is also used as fertilizers, animal feed, cosmetic product formulation and remediation in aquaculture. (West et al., 2016; Bikker et. al., 2016).

For some time now, seaweed cultivation has become one of the mainstay marine agriculture reported to be increasingly gaining momentum in the Asian and European waters (Mac Monagail et al., 2017). However, unlike the booming seaweed industrial revolution in the Asian and European continents, little is known about seaweed farming in the marine waters of the sub-Saharan African countries, especially in Ghana. In order to deal with the seaweed menace in Ghana, the Seaweed Biorefinery Ghana (SEABIOGHA) project was designed to convert seaweeds into bio-energy, and create jobs for fishers whose livelihoods had become precarious. However, the prospects for producing seaweed depends on the suitability of the growing environment and on an in-depth socio-economic survey of the communities chosen to adopt seaweed cultivation as a business.

One of the important technologies that is important for the selection of suitable growing space for seaweed cultivation is the use of Spatial Multi-criteria decision tool in Geographical Information System (GIS) (Sulma et al., 2010; de Sousa, 2012). However, the selection of suitable environment for the cultivation of seaweed, without being linked to the willingness of the people in the fishing communities can lead to a failure of seaweed cultivation project. This is because, the acceptance and adoption of new agricultural practice in a community may depend on different socio-economic or socio- cultural background such as gender, age and education. For example, according Zamroni & Yamao (2011), the educational levels of seaweed farmers in four villages of South Sulawesi Province in the eastern part of Indonesia was low, averaging only 2.4 years while 22.5% of them never had a formal education. In another study, higher percent of females are engaged in seaweed farming as compared to males in Tanzania.