Jamestown’s plastic sea

In Jamestown, an old fishing district of Accra, pirogues are hauled by hand across a shore covered in plastic waste. The district lies just east of the Korle Lagoon, where the Odaw empties, the main drainage channel for more than 80% of the city according to a University of Ghana researcher (JoyNews, June 2026). Nationally, Ghana produces about 840,000 tonnes of plastic waste a year; less than 10% is recycled and about 9% ends up in the ocean (Ministry of Environment, 2022). Photographed on 25 April 2026, this essay follows the shoreline from dawn to backlight: the new harbour, the nets, the shore, boats hauled through the waste.

Jamestown, the lighthouse and the new harbour

Jamestown grew up around James Fort, built in 1673 by the Royal African Company, which ran a trading post for gold and slaves there. The red-and-white banded lighthouse is about 28 m high; its white flash, every ten seconds from 35 m above the sea, reaches about 18 km. The neighbouring fishing harbour was commissioned on 13 September 2024.

Dawn over the basin

On the Gulf of Guinea, at 5° 32′ north, the pirogues set out and return at first light. The 2013 census counted 302 landing beaches and 139,155 fishermen along about 550 km of Ghanaian coast. From July to September, a cold-water upwelling is centred off Ghana.

Nets and fishermen

In Ghana, landings of small pelagic fish fell by 59% between 1993 and 2019, while the fleet grew from about 8,000 canoes in 1990 to 13,650 in 2017 (The Conversation, 2024). On the Jamestown quay, nets are piled up and mended.

The plastic shore

Beneath the ochre cliff, pirogues rest on a bed of waste. In the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, plastic makes up about 16% of waste (GARID project, 2021). The Odaw carries plastic and microplastics down to the Korle Lagoon, before the Gulf of Guinea. Fishers at Apo, in the Western Region, say they bring up bottles and bags in their nets (GNA, 2025).

Hauling boats through the waste

Crews haul together, up a ramp of waste. Ghanaian pirogues are generally built from wawa: a split log, a carved hull, planks nailed on to raise the sides. The 2013 census counted 12,728 marine canoes, 73% of them fitted with an outboard.