Technical and Economic Evaluation of Mechanised Canoe Puller for Small-Scale Fishery in Ghana

The small-scale fishing industry in Ghana pulls canoes manually upon arrival from fishing. Such activity has been identified as tedious, labour demanding and time-consuming among fishing activities. The study aimed to compare a canoe's manual and mechanised pulling. To compare the methods, the heart rate (HR) of two (2) fishermen trained to operate the developed canoe puller machine also involved in manual pulling during manual and mechanised pulling methods through the same distance while the time used was recorded. A polar heart rate (MP430) watch was used to measure the HR of the fishermen. A cost analysis was done for each operation. Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were done using GenStat software (VSN International, 2011). Means were obtained using the least significant difference (LSD). Statistical significance was carried out at p<0.05. The mean heart rates during manual and mechanised pulling were 123.15 and 103.10 bpm, respectively. The energy expenditure required for manual was 786.27 W and mechanised was 558.50 W. The mean time used during manual pulling through a distance of 130 m was 21.5 min while 8.4 min was recorded for mechanising. Mechanised pulling reduces labour costs by 64% and time reduction by 43.8%. Again, it has been observed that using mechanise canoe pulling reduces the costs of pulling by 84.40 % as compared to manual pulling.