Decisions on management are taken on the basis of information concerning the production sectors (statistics on catch, effort, other economic data) and the resources (population dynamics parameters, abundance, etc.).
When CECAF was set up fishery statistics were totally inadequate. The available data were mostly incomplete (both with regard to non-coastal fleets and coastal artisanal fisheries) and their breakdown by geographic areas and species, and groups of species was, in general, not suitable for the assessment of resources and estimation of levels of exploitation. The work of CECAF consisted of disseminating the use of the STATLANT Questionnaire, improving its utilization (theoretical training courses, on-the-job training, etc.), and in exerting indirect pressure on the non-coastal countries in order to break down the data correctly. The first questionnaire was published in 1976 and updated approximately every two years thereafter. Already by 1977 their data were sufficient to make approximate assessments by larger statistical divisions for CECAF as a whole. In order to allow for a more thorough examination of the problems involved, a Working Group on Fishery Statistics held its First Meeting in 1979. The Committee requested it to revise the statistical grid by establishing more detailed divisions (corresponding as closely as possible to the Exclusive Economic Zones without, however, interfering with the process of delimitation of maritime boundaries) in order to render compatible the groupings of statistics according to the two distinct concepts of natural (stock limits) and economic boundaries.
In short, by 1980 it was possible to consider the statistics on catches collected by the STATLANT 34A form to be more or less satisfactory with regard to their availability, coverage and breakdown. On the other hand, the data on effort collected through the STATLANT 34B forms proved totally unsuitable for the assessment of resources, particularly with regard to coastal pelagic stocks. A new form, specifically for CECAF, to collect catches by unit of effort (CECAF form for reporting c.p.u.e.) was drawn up to overcome this difficulty.
By 1980 the problems with catch statistics in CECAF concerned not so much availability and breakdown by large divisions, but rather of quality, trustworthiness and breakdown by Exclusive Economic Zones. This was a logical development in view of the changes that had taken place as regards the Law of the Sea, but the problem of reliability concerned data derived from both foreign as well as coastal fleets and more particularly so for small-scale fisheries. This question had to be dealt with at two levels by CECAF:
for the local fleets: support to national structures for collection, to the extent of the means available;
for the non-local fleets: organization of activities on the “principles of control and surveillance” of the fisheries, logbooks, on-board observers, aerial surveillance, etc.
The collection of statistics, therefore, entered a second phase in 1980 which will eventually lead to reshaping the system. The improvement to be expected will greatly depend on the control that the coastal countries will be able to exert on statistical sources, whether these be national or foreign.
Under the impetus of the CECAF Project and of a small number of laboratories in the region, a start was made to collect socio-economic statistics also; it is worth noting here that, although up to now only biologists have used them, catch and effort statistics are basic economic data which characterize in a certain sense the inputs and the outputs of the fishery system.
Table 1 summarizes the series of important meetings (assessment and training) organized within the framework of CECAF as well as events relating to management which took place elsewhere in the world (cf. Item No. 6, Table 1). A considerable growth in activity can be noted after 1976 mainly as a result of the “CECAF Project”. Tables 2 and 3 give a detailed chronological report of assessments by species or groups of species, for the northern region of CECAF, (where there are large monospecific fish concentrations) and by country for the southern region (Gulf of Guinea) where the multispecific nature of the exploitations makes it difficult to take a monospecific approach. Insofar as possible, all assessments carried out in the region have been taken into account whatever their origin (FAO, CECAF, coastal laboratory, foreign laboratory, various bilateral cooperation activities, etc.) with particular attention being paid to those conclusions considered useful for management.
At the Symposium on the Oceanography and Fishery Resources of the Tropical Atlantic, Abidjan, October 1966, organized by Unesco, FAO and OAU, knowledge of the region was reviewed particularly as a result of the international programmes of ICITAfb1 and the GTS2. Progress was noticed in the understanding of production mechanisms and in the description of environment. Following the GTS, Longhurst (1969) presented his classification of fish communities and the first population dynamic studies on Sciaenidae carried out at Pointe Noire, Congo and Nigeria were reported. Nevertheless, despite a description of certain fisheries, no assessment of resources was presented and the state of the stocks was generally unknown except for an assessment of the resources of Nigeria made by Longhurst (1965) and reports of overexploitation of hake in Morocco by Furnestin, (1952), and Sciaenidae in Sierra Leone by Watts, (1962).
The FAO/ICES Symposium on the Living Resources of the African Atlantic Continental Shelf from the Straits of Gibraltar to Cape Verde in 1968 (Letaconnoux and Went (1970)) provided considerable documentation on the resources of the region, their distribution, their biology and their exploitation, but no new element regarding the assessment of stocks and their level of exploitation.
1 ICITA - International Cooperative Investigation of the Tropical Atlantic, FAO.
In these conditions, and in the absence of adequate statistics, the ACMRR/ICES Working Group that met in 1968 and 1969 could only arrive at some provisional conclusions regarding overexploitation of hake and Sparidae in the northern CECAF region, and considered as a whole the spiny lobster resources of Mauritania and Sciaenidae of the continental shelf of the Gulf of Guinea. These reports were subsequently reviewed on a fairly regular basis. In 1970 the first estimates of demersal stock for the Ivory Coast and the shrimp stocks for the Ivory Coast and Ghana were made.
From 1971 assessment work increased in Senegal (on shrimp, and Pomadasyidae), in the Congo (on Sciaenidae and the trawl fishery in general), and in all the Gulf of Guinea on small pelagic species (especially sardinellas). In 1972 important results were obtained regarding sardines in Morocco, and sardinellas, horse-mackerel and mackerel in the Cape Blanc-Cape Roxo sector. From 1974 to 1977 an ever increasing number of papers were published by the more active national laboratories in the region and by FAO projects (in The Gambia, Guinea and Morocco). The techniques of acoustic surveying, in use from 1975 in Morocco, became a current practice in the entire northern region of CECAF and, occasionally, in the Gulf of Guinea. From 1977 onwards this resulted in a substantial growth in knowledge on the distribution of migratory stocks and their biomass (the accuracy of the absolute values of biomass were, however, not yet assessed). From then on the “CECAF Project” organized an intensive seriesof special working groups (see Table 1) during which the information was inventoried, regrouped, refined and the conclusions eventually extrapolated to similar regions on stocks. The mass of information placed at the disposal of the region was finally used, from 1978, in a series of syntheses promoted by FAO on coastal pelagic species (by Boely and Fréon, 1980), and the demersal species (Domain, 1980), the shrimp (Garcia and Lhomme, 1980), and the resources of the northern zone of CECAF (Bel vèze and Bravo de Laguna, 1980).
By 1982 almost all the information accumulated had been processed for a better assessment of the resources. Further progress can only come from work currently underway and thus it depends mostly on present-day research efforts and it must be stressed here that producing scientific information and updating assessments is the responsibility of the coastal country. The updating of the assessments is slowing down quite noticeably which has resulted in concern being expressed at the Management Sub-Committee Meeting held in Dakar in June 1982 at its Fourth Session (cf. Introduction).
Concerning statistics, the work of the Sub-Committee has resulted in a marked improvement in the availability of statistics, their breakdown by species and statistical divisions and in the regular preparation of detailed regional bulletins. The changes in the Laws of the Sea have initiated revision of the statistical grid of CECAF to bring it closer to the Sub-Division by Exclusive Economic Zone (the chief constraint on the latter activity being the frequent absence of any formal demarcation of the maritime areas now coming under national jurisdictions).
The problem of the availability of statistics having been generally solved, the Sub-Committee has been looking at the problem of their quality (reliability) which has led it to consider problems of surveillance and control of foreign fisheries as well as the problem of collecting data from local fisheries. This has led to the organization of technical consultancies, ad hocworking groups, training courses, and practical demonstrations. The Sub-Committee has recommended vigorous action in statistics collection within the framework of fishing agreements.
Finally, it would seem to have exhausted the resources at its disposal in this domain; sometimes working to the very limits of its terms of reference which lays down an exclusively advisory role for it.
In the area of assessment of resources the work of the Sub-Committee has been directed along the following general lines:
the collection of biological data to analyse the effects in the change of mesh sizes;
analysis of the distribution of migration of stocks;
assessment of potentials (at levels of effort corresponding to FMSYor F0.1);
promotion/coordination of acoustic surveys;
coordination of assessments on shared stocks.
In this task it has been fully supported by the “CECAF Project” which has mobilized the necessary funds for this growth of activity.
However, over-optimism should be avoided because, throughout this short report on progress achieved in what is regarded as basic information, it is noted that the statistics have only become useful (at the level of statistical divisions) towards 1977–78, by which date assessments had made considerable progress while still being insufficient in many cases. At working group meetings these basic statistics have sometimes been “interpreted” in an attempt to arrive at assessments by unit stock (or unit fishery) but this is far from being the general case. As things now stand, the limiting factors as regards management, derived from the quality or the quantity of the basic data, are as follows:
The results available regarding the rate of exploitation of stocks in many countries are not always accurate enough to motivate the national authorities in charge of management. The degree of resolution of the analyses done at regional level owing to the availability of data is sometimes limited, and a national Fisheries Directorate is not likely to undertake management, (frequently difficult) on the sole basis of a document of regional coverage indicating that the relevant statistical division as a whole seems overexploited by all the countries concerned.
The available results may refer to a limited number of species in the area where, in fact, there is a much larger number of species of commercial interest. Some generalizations to species groups or multispecies stocks have been made, but here again the uncertainty of the conclusions does not encourage the authorities to take far-reaching actions.
New data are acquired too slowly in some areas of CECAF and the updatings of assessments are not sufficiently frequent when dealing with short-lived species with inter-annual variations in abundance which are far from negligible. This judgement should, however, not be generalized since there are sectors or stocks for which the knowledge is regularly updated (e.g., the sardines of Morocco, cephalopods in the northern region of CECAF, fisheries of Senegal, of Ivory Coast, demersal fisheries of Nigeria, etc.).
It can be seen from the results achieved that there are “two speeds” of development in the CECAF region that should be recognized if hasty conclusions are to be avoided. Two groups of coastal countries have to be distinguished. The first group consists of those countries with considerable fishery resources, where there are more or less well-organized laboratories, with a national expertise that is constantly growing and where fishing and fishery agreements play a major role in the economy. These countries progress fairly rapidly (at least in their approach to industrial fishing) bearing in mind the constraints they have to overcome and the time schedules they have to meet.
On the other hand, a group of countries also exist where the fishery resources are limited and where the economic role of fisheries is a secondary one as compared to that of agriculture or large mineral (oil) resources. These countries are generally short of expertise in the field of fisheries and they are usually more interested in small-scale fisheries (in lagoons or at sea) which are difficult to analyse. As a consequence, the critical mass cannot be reached and the progress of understanding is slow.
This distinction means that two levels may also exist in CECAF as regards requirements and implementation of management. Superficially these two levels could be associated respectively with the northern and southern CECAF regions (Gulf of Guinea) were it not for the fact that within these two sectors there are important exceptions.
It is important to note that in the CECAF region over the past 15 years there has been no major collapse with any drastic consequences to the coastal countries economies as has often been the case in numerous other resource-rich regions of the world, e.g., Peru, California, Southwest Africa, etc. Most pelagic stocks are considered as intensively to fully exploited. The deep-water demersal resources of the Gulf of Guinea are underexploited. It is recognized that the first signs of overexploitation of coastal demersal stocks in the Gulf of Guinea were localized within restricted areas. The abundance of sea-bream in the northern CECAF region declined considerably and it is likely that the intensive fishing during the seventies was at least partly responsible, but the apparent replacement of this resource by cephalopods of great commercial value has pushed this problem into the background. Mackerel have been declared as overexploited but this is a fishery that is not well known in the coastal countries dealing with a sporadic species the availability of which can vary greatly. In these conditions the diagnosis of overexploitation should be cautiously made. Hake have also been reported as being overexploited (since 1950 for white hake) if only the biological criteria are considered. They would certainly seem to be caught too young with a too small a mesh, but when socio-economic criteria are taken into account the problem becomes more complex and can only be overcome very gradually. The only notable collapse has been sardinellas in the Ivory Coast/Ghana/Togo region. It is now admitted that this is a resource subject to great natural variations and the problem is that of controlling the fishing effort of an efficient small-scale fishery on & fluctuating resource. At present there is no suitable technique that can be easily applied to regulate this type of exploitation.
Finally, the state of the lagoon stocks is not well known and decreases in production observed have been attributed to modifications to environment (in Benin) or to exploitation occurring either spontaneously (Ebrie Lagoon, Ivory Coast) or as a result of a development programme (Aby Lagoon, Ivory Coast).
