Trends in Industrial and Artisanal Catch Per Effort in West African Fisheries
Open accessAbstract
Artisanal fisheries are generally assumed to generate a lower fishing effort in comparison to the industrial sector. This study aims to comparing catch, fishing effort, and catch‐per‐unit‐of‐effort (CPUE) for each sector, using kWdays as a metric for fishing effort, and kg/kWdays for CPUE. The study, which covers West Africa (1950–2010), finds that the artisanal sector spends 4.7•10 9 kWdays/year versus 1.3•10 9 kWdays/year by the industrial sector, due to increasing numbers and size of artisanal boats, which in Senegal and Ghana can exceed that of (smaller) industrial vessels. The artisanal total fishing effort increased by 10‐fold between 1950 and 2010, in contrast to a decrease in the industrial effort since the 1990s, which points to the occurrence of Malthusian overfishing, a form of fishing that favors excess labor instead of capital. This analysis finds that the CPUE declined by 1/3 since 1950 driven by a strong decline in the artisanal CPUE, which is 11 times lower than industrial CPUE. This confirms other indicators of decline of fish populations. This study calls for the prioritization of artisanal fisheries, with regard to management and data availability, but also as an important but unregulated sector, which contributes to overexploitation of fish stocks that are vital for communities in West Africa.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Overexploitation of fisheries, including IUU fishing, damages marine ecosystems and results in the depletion of fish stock.
“The resulting consequences include the overexploitation of fisheries (including IUU fishing) which damages marine ecosystems and results in the depletion of fish stock (Zeller and Pauly, 2016;Doumbouya et al., 2017;Belhabib, Greer, and Pauly, 2018).”
From The Cyclical Nature of Maritime Security Threats: Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing as a Threat to Human and National Security in the Gulf of Guinea (2020) · cites this paper as Belhabib, Greer, and Pauly, 2018
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 3
- ANON. (2014). The fisheries sector in The Gambia: trade, value addition and social inclusiveness, with a focus on women. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. United Nations Publication, New York, 66p.
- Doumbouya, A. (2014). Guinean Fisheries: case study identification and selection. Centre National des Sciences Halieutique de Boussoura -CNSHB, Conakry. FAO. (2004). Report of the technical consultation to review progress and promote the full implementation of the international plan of action to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the international plan of action for the management of fishing capacity. 43p 2004. FAO, Fisheries Report No. 753. Rome, FAO.
- Mansfield, B. (2011). Modern industrial fisheries and the crisis of overfishing. In: Peet, R., Robbins, P., and Watts, M., eds. Global Political Ecology. Routledge, London.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Okafor-Yarwood, I. (2020) · African Security · doi:10.1080/19392206.2020.1724432 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
- Authors
- Belhabib, D., Greer, K., & Pauly, D.
- Affiliations
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Belhabib, Dyhia
- Venue
- Conservation Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-03-30
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 1755-263X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2593715183
- Cited by
- 96
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 4.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Conservation Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Pew Charitable Trusts
- Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Marine and fisheries research
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Marine and Coastal Ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Aquatic Ecosystems and Biodiversity
- Keywords
- small-scale fisheries, industrial fisheries, catch per unit effort, fishing effort, fish stock overexploitation, vessel size, fisheries management, West African fisheries
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
