In 1967, under the regime of free access to resources outside territorial waters, FAO set up CECAF to allow the countries fishing in the region to meet in order to discusss measures to be recommended to ensure conservation and as reasonable an exploitation as possible of their resources. Such a decision had become necessary because (as a result of the rapid development of the activities of the long distance fleets) the rates of exploitation were rising rapidly and some resources were about to become overexploited, as was confirmed for sea-bream and hake at the first meeting of the ACMRR/ICES Working Party (ACMRR (FAO), 1968).
At this time the coastal countries only had embryonic fishery and research services and thus they had little information on these resources; little expertise and little influence on the results of the debates in these first meetings. Early work was mainly concerned with the stocks being heavily exploited by the long-distance fleets: hake and sea-bream. Studies showed (ACMRR (FAO), 1968) that no regulation on effort was necessary for the hake but that it was necessary to stop and then reduce the effort being used on the sea-bream. These decisions, taken with great prudence on the basis of incomplete data, were later generally confirmed.
Already in 1970 it was becoming clear that the mesh size used on the above stocks, as well as on the coastal populations of croakers in the Gulf of Guinea, were too small and that a considerable increase in the mesh size was necessary. In fact, a Working Party on Regulatory Measures for Demersal Stocks was set up and, at the end of its first meeting in April 1970, recommended (FAO, 1970) the mesh size (in the trawl cod-end) should have an opening of 70 mm when trawling on bottoms of less than 100 m, and 90 mm in deeper waters in order to mainly protect stocks of sea-bream on the continental shelf and hake on the continental slope. At subsequent sessions the countries in the region made known their decision to include this regulation in their laws. In actual fact, however, these laws continued to be inadequately enforced because of the obvious complications regarding enforcement measures. Complementary studies carried out in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Congo and Nigeria had confirmed the need to increase the authorized mesh size; and-faced with a necessity of finding a viable compromise between the optimum mesh size for a multispecific fishery and the difficulties of control - the Member Countries of CECAF agreed at the Sixth Session (Agadir, 1979) to recommend a minimum mesh size of 60 mm for the exploitation of all demersal species in the CECAF zone (excluding special exceptions supported by scientific evidence).
This ultimate recommendation, which is more realistic and more enforceable than the first, is now being introduced into the legislation of many countries in the region and it has been adopted by the Sub-Regional Conference1 attended by the Ministers of Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau. The rigorous enforcement of this mesh size is, however, still far from being realized even in the regions where it is clear that the mesh size of 60 mm (stretched) is still smaller than that which would give the best long-term results. In certain cases its application poses a tricky problem for multispecies fishing with catches of different value (e.g., hake and deep-water shrimp) exploited by heterogeneous and competing fisheries (e.g., Moroccan and Spanish fleets). This problem is now being studied and it can be expected that progress will be slow.
The question arises, why CECAF has apparently not oriented its advisory activities towards the problem of the regulation of the overall level of fishing effort; in the following paragraph this question will be examined.
Already in 1968 for lobster, 1969 for sea-bream, 1970 for hake and 1971 for cephalopods and small coastal pelagic species (Divisions 34.1.3–34.3.1), as well as sardines of Morocco in 1975–76 the Working Parties indicated that the fishing effort had reached or surpassed the level corresponding to average maximum production (biological overexploitation). Measures to regulate the fishing effort were already suggested at the beginning of CECAF's activities (by ACMRR (FAO), 1968) then “strongly recommended” in 1971 during the Second Session of the Working Party on Regulatory Measures for Demersal Stocks (FAO, 1971). Discussions on this point should be placed in their international context.
In fact, in the cool-temperate zone, the more “developed” Fishery Commissions such as ICNAF had scarcely touched on the problem of regulating fishing effort in 1967 when CECAF was established. Only in 1968 was it clearly recognized within ICNAF that the regulation of mesh size on its own was insufficient and that regulation of the intensity of fishing was also necessary. Research then turned towards the indirect regulation of fishing effort through the use of total allowable catches (TAC) and quotas. After numerous technical discussions the first quotas were fixed in 1971. The first difficulties of applying them appeared in 1973 (particularly for multispecies fisheries) but the process was generalized by 1974. The principles of dividing up quotas on the basis of maximum sustainable yield was being questioned in 1975. The problems involved were never totally solved by the time the Law of the Sea was changed and the question of regulating fishing effort in an international context has not yet been satisfactorily answered. With these developments in mind, it becomes clear that, in the context of CECAF v-v characterized as it was originally by a lack of reliable statistics, insufficient trained scientific personnel, and a non-existent tradition in stock assessment v-v, it was too much to hope to set up a mechanism as “sophisticated” as that of effort regulation by quotas which has proved difficult to implement even in better equipped regions.
Already difficult in temperate seas, this regulation would have been almost impossible in tropical zones because of the basically multispecies nature of the resources.
The Working Party on Regulatory Measures for Demersal Stocks analysed the problem in detail during the Second Session in 1971, with a very slight delay as compared to ICNAF. It pointed out that, judging from the experience gained in other regions where scientific research facilities were much more highly developed than they are likely to be in the near future in the CECAF area, it would be difficult to obtain precise estimates on “potential” yield as the degree of accuracy of the information available at this time was insufficient to permit setting catch allocations especially since a large part of the catch taken was not landed in the region.
When discussing this question at its Second Session in May 1971, the Committee also considered it premature to set up such a regulation, and underlined the risk that a quota system, based as in similar cases elsewhere on historical rights, would only serve to perpetuate the current inequalities between coastal and non—coastal countries. This argument influenced the choice of the Committee as regards management, when it decided to immediately recommend control over mesh size and to postpone to a later date the regulation of fishing effort.
To accelerate the acquisition of knowledge, and above all to transfer this know-how from foreign laboratories to those in the region, and finally to permit regulation of fishing effort on the most appropriate basis, the Committee set up, at its Third Session in December 1972, a Working Party on Resource Evaluation dealing with statistics and the state of the stocks.
It is clear, therefore, that up to 1974 the problem of regulating effort was posed without any solution; the limiting factor being the relative “scientific underdevelopment” of many States in the area; the lack of cooperation on the part of some foreign countries in possession of data and unfavourable consequences of the old Law of the Sea for coastal countries as far as “sharing” of resources is concerned.
Looking in retrospect on the concrete results, or rather the lack of results, achieved in the areas covered by other Commissions (ICNAF, ICSEAF, etc.) in applying a system of catch quotas, one is led to the conclusion that this “underdevelopment” probably avoided the premature creation of an expensive and cumbersome management techniques inherited from temperate seas and more developed countries, the efficiency of which is presently questioned even in the areas where it was first implemented and, which in the CECAF context, would have been more than doubtful.
Before the opening of the Third Conference on the Law of the Sea, and already in the early seventies, some African countries unilaterally extended their jurisdiction over coastal waters. The Report of the Third Session of CECAF, December 1972, for the first time, differentiates between coastal and non-coastal countries, and the representatives of the former insisted on the responsibilities in the matter of implementing the management measures analysed and proposed within the framework of CECAF.
The creation of the Sub-Committee for the Management of Resources Within the Limits of National Jurisdiction which was decided at the Third Session of CECAF in Tenerife in 1972 and the composition of which was limited to coastal countries, then confirmed this responsibility which had been acquired de facto. This Sub-Committee met for the first time in Lomé in 1977 and acknowledged that the new Law of the Sea then being drawn up would facilitate the implementation of management measures.
The problem of the regulation of fishing effort therefore was posed after this date in quite different terms. Each country was responsible for the level of effort it had authorized on the resources belonging to it, and the limitation of fishing effort had to be carried out “within the framework of national management and development plans” (First Session of the Sub-Committee on Management 1977) in function of objectives defined by each Coastal State. The efforts of the Committee in the management sector were, therefore, mainly concerned with problems related to the development of national capacities as regards management and the coordination of management plans between countries sharing the same resource. It was in this spirit that Resolution MR/1/2 was to be passed when the First Session of the Sub-Committee on Management in 1977 requested that:
national development plans should take into account the results of scientific assessments and the limitations of the resource;
the countries sharing a resource should cooperate, on its periodic assessment and its management.
Stimulated by this Sub-Committee, CECAF organized from 1977 to 1980 an impressive series of 24 special Working Parties on various important aspects of the resources of the region which led to the establishment of a recognized basis of information at regional level. FAO, financed the preparation of syntheses on CECAF resources on the basis of the results of the first working groups (FAO, 1980; Belvéze and Bravo de Laguna, 1980).
Taken as a whole, the reports showed a considerable improvement in quality and quantity both with regard to the actual results and the geographic coverage. It was confirmed that a large majority of the stocks were intensively to fully exploited (sometimes overexploited in the northern sector of CECAF) at the time the summaries were prepared. Evaluation of the order of magnitude of the resources and the level of exploitation which were approximately determined, became urgent to decide on their rational utilization at the national and sub-regional level (in the case of shared stocks). The problem of limiting the effort arose mainly in terms of allocation, inside the Exclusive Economic Zones - conflicts between various segments of national fisheries and between these and the authorized foreign fleets - and between neighbouring states exploiting a resource in common subject to important migration patterns. It is clear that once the problem had been understood in these terms, the socio-economic elements and also the unsolved question of collecting these data became important.
To serve as examples, the CECAF Project carried out a small number of pilot studies on cephalopods and the main demersal resources of the northern sector of CECAF and on the shrimp fisheries (where there is a powerful interaction between industrial and small-scale fisheries), while similar work was being set up at the national level in various coastal countries such as Senegal for the sardinella fishery, and Ivory Coast for the lagoon fishery. This work, outlining the problem on social and economic grounds, translated the question of regulation and allocation of fishing effort into objective terms. The possibility of considerably increasing the returns from heavily exploited fisheries (not necessarily overexploited in the biological sense of the term) by an appropriate reduction in effort was demonstrated and also the need to identify the precise objectives of management and resolve possible contradictions between them, facing up to the basic problem which is the definition of management and development strategies by the national authorities.
At the same time, the Committee decided in 1979 to organize a Technical Consultation on Stock Management in the CECAF Statistical Division in Sahara and Cape Verde Divisions in Dakar, in June 1979, the chief objective being to tackle the problem of regulating the effort on migratory stocks that were commonly exploited. During this meeting the participants examined the procedures to determine the overall optimum effort on an economic basis, the positive financial consequences of regulation, and the basis to calculate the sharing of common resources. The coastal countries of CECAF have generally recognized at national level1 and sub-regional level2 the need to control effort. They have, however, stressed that the negotiations which this type of management entailed should be backstopped by national experts exclusively. The small number or lack of expertise and research facilities and structures in certain countries was previously the chief limiting factor in implementing the regulation of fishing effort. It was also agreed that more knowledge on the migrations and, therefore, exchanges between Exclusive Economic Zones was necessary3
Finally, at its Eight Session (Lomé, 1982) the Committee recommended to its Sub-Committee on Management to “devote attention to the question of regulation of effort and also to management techniques such as quotas and total allowable catches (TAC)” in the case of shared stocks.
