Summary of interview conducted with Dr. Edward Kimani, Chief Scientist on board FV Vega. The main interview highlights the purpose of the research cruise, expectations from the findings and the way forward including what the archived samples will be used for.

 

The South Western Indian Ocean Fisheries Project (SWIOFP) is one of the major projects underway in the western Indian Ocean region. This project in conjunction with the closely related Agulhas Somali Current Large Marine Ecosystems (ASCLME) has been operating in partnership and in close collaboration with WIOMSA since inception. SWIOFP was initiated in April 2008 to assess the current status of offshore fisheries within the 200 nautical miles Exclusive Economic Zone of the coastal states of Africa bordering the South West Indian Ocean region. SWIOFP is funded by the World Bank through the Global Environment Facility and implemented by Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, La Reunion-France, Seychelles, South Africa and Tanzania.

The Project has five operational components whose focal points are based in the riparian countries. Key among these is Component 2, which focuses on the assessment and sustainable utilization of crustaceans.

One of the planned activities in Component 2 that SWIOFP undertook recently in close collaboration with the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research institute (KMFRI) is the prawn trawl survey in Malindi-Ungwana Bay located in the northern coast of Kenya. Kenya has identified this Bay as one of the most important fishing grounds and proposed to SWIOFP that the existing stocks in Bay should be assessed and the status of the marine ecosystem determined.

Consequently, the SWIOFP survey cruise in Malindi-Ungwana Bay was conducted from 22^nd January to 3^rd February 2011 on board the Fish Vessel (FV) Vega. The overall objective of the cruise was to assess the crustacean stocks, their species composition and distribution and to collect samples for biological and genetic studies, and also to record environmental data useful for understanding the status of the bay.

Apart from the crew of FV Vega, the scientific team comprised 11 scientists from KMFRI, Moi University, National Museums of Kenya and the Fisheries Department. Chief Scientist was the Fisheries Expert from KMFRI, Dr. Edward Kimani.  Other land based senior scientists involved in the preparation and implementation of the survey were the Head of the SWIOFP Kenya Focal Point Dr Renison Ruwa, the Regional Coordinator for Component 2 Dr Johan Groneveld of South Africa and the Logistical Coordinator of the entire Cruise Teresa Athayde.

After the cruise, the Chief Scientist gave an interview and reported that despite the limited laboratory space in the FV Vega, which is not designed for research purposes but to trawl, the vessel provided an excellent opportunity for Kenyan scientist to survey the Bay.

Dr. Kimani said, “We shall be able to estimate how much prawns are available within the study area. We will determine if the stock is connected with other shallow water prawn stocks within the region. The data will also reveal whether commercial prawn trawling harvests the fish stocks targeted by the Kenyan artisanal fishers in the adjacent inshore waters”.

“The aim of SWIOFP is to generate data and information for the management of offshore marine resources of Kenya and the entire region. This research will therefore add to the knowledge of crustacean resources such as lobsters, crabs and prawns in the Bay that are affected or impacted during their exploitation”, the Chief Scientist concluded.

Most of the material from the survey is archived at the KMFRI laboratories located in Mombasa. The bulk of the samples and data collected will be used by students affiliated to SWIOFP Kenya Focal Point to produce two PhD and two MSc theses. 

 

The Second Announcement of the Seventh WIOMSA Scientific Symposium is out. It can be downloaded from http://www.wiomsa.net/images/stories/WIOMSA%20Seventh%20Symposium_Second%20Announcement.pdf

Please circulate the Announcement widely

A marine biodiversity survey covering the 47 countries of the Indian Ocean has highlighted inequalities and inadequacies in data coverage, and a shortage of scientists equipped to conduct such surveys.

Scientists at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa; the Zoological Survey of India, Chennai; and the Centre for Advanced Study in Marine Biology, Tamil Nadu, pooled available records to create an inventory of nearly 35,000 coastal and marine species in the region, published in the January issue of PLoS One.

“The study tells us how little we know and how much needs to be discovered,” lead author and NIO scientist, Mohideen Wafar, told SciDev.Net. The report is part of the larger, ongoing Census of Marine Life’ project, involving more than 2,700 scientists in 80 countries, to assess the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the world’s ocean habitats.

Read the full article from: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/marine-biodiversity-survey-reveals-data-gaps.html

Fewer big, predatory fish are swimming in the world’s oceans because of overfishing by humans, leaving smaller fish to thrive and double in force over the past 100 years, scientists said today.

Big fish such as cod, tuna, and groupers have declined worldwide by two-thirds while the number of anchovies, sardines and capelin has surged in their absence, said University of British Columbia researchers.

Meanwhile, people around the world are fishing harder and coming up with the same or fewer numbers in their catch, indicating that humans may have maxed out the ocean’s capacity to provide us with food.

“Overfishing has absolutely had a ‘when cats are away, the mice will play’ effect on our oceans,” said Villy Christensen, a professor in the UBC Fisheries Centre who presented the research findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington.

“By removing the large, predatory species from the ocean, small forage fish have been left to thrive.”

Read the full article from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110218/sc_afp/environmentoceansfish

Study finds seine net elimination an important step to the recovery of robust fish communities.

Marine conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society working in Kenya have found that better fisheries management that includes restricting fishing gear is producing more predatory and longer-lived species and is improving fishing even in adjacent areas where no management is taking place.

During a 10-year study, conservationists recording fish catches found that the implementation of fishing regulations—and particularly the banning of small-mesh seine nets that indiscriminately capture all fish—allowed practically all fish species to recover, especially those species that took longer to reproduce. Fish communities in regulated sites also had a greater diversity of predatory fish species and those with longer life spans. Even in unregulated areas there were small improvements to the fish community.

The study appears in the February print version of Fisheries Management and Ecology. The authors of the study include Dr. Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society and Christina Hicks of James Cook University in Australia.

The study examined the effects of increasing fisheries management and fishing gear restrictions in 11 coral reef sites along the 75-kilometer stretch of Kenyan coast around the city of Mombasa for a 10-year period.

The wholesale removal of fine-mesh seine nets was implemented in six sites to the south of Mombasa, all of which were more than 30 kilometers away from areas closed to fishing. Kenyatta Beach—a landing site and popular tourist destination near Mombasa Marine National Park—served as the study’s most intensively regulated site. The northernmost sites, where fishermen continued to use seine nets in spite of restrictions, were within five kilometers of the fisheries closure zones. In addition to seine nets, other types of gear examined in the study were traps, lines, regular nets, and spears.

“The study shows that regulating coastal fisheries allows fish populations to recover in a number of predictable ways that correspond with knowledge of the biology and ecological characteristics of individual species, but also that the recovery was faster then predicted for some species,” said Dr. Tim McClanahan, WCS Senior Conservationist and head of the society’s coral reef research and conservation program.

From February 1998 to August 2007, researchers identified and measured individual fish from 152 species caught at each of the 11 sites—with 15 species representing approximately 90 percent of the data pool—as well as recording the gear used. On average, all fish species from regulated sites over the course of the study increased in body length over time, with two species—the rabbitfish (averaging a short lifespan of 5.9 years) and seagrass parrotfish (averaging a intermediate lifespan of 7.7 years)—exhibiting the most significant size increases following fishing regulations. The unregulated northern sites were dominated by short-lived herbivorous species and the very few species that were able to escape the gaps of small-meshed nets.

Predictably, the largest and longest lived fish were landed at the most regulated site (Kenyatta), and the smallest in the least regulated. Further, spears and gill nets caught the largest fish in the study, whereas the smallest were caught in seines and lines. Also, fish body lengths in the sites where seine net bans were implemented and enforced during the study were growing to the same lengths as fish from the most regulated site by the end of the study.

Dr. McClanahan said the improvements even in the unregulated areas suggest that strong management can improve conditions in adjacent areas where management is weak.

“This can lead to either free loading on the nearby stronger management or increased interests in participating in the improved management, depending on the interests, incentives, and organization of the fishing and management community,” McClanahan said.

The study builds on a previous WCS study from the same sites on the costs and revenues of local fisheries along the coast of Kenya, which was published last year in Conservation Biology and demonstrated that effective fisheries management actually yields more profits for fishermen. In terms of income, fishermen working in Kenyatta experienced a 60 percent increase in revenue (from 224 up to 374 Kenya shillings, or $3 up to $5) following the beach seine ban in 2001. By contrast, daily income in the northern sites averaged $2 per person between 2002-2007. Overall, fishing revenue in the southern landing sites (all of which banned beach seines during the study period) was 41 percent higher than northern coast sites with the beach seines; Kenyatta’s fishing revenue climbed to 135 percent higher than northern sites after seine elimination.

Dr. Caleb McClennen, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Marine Program, said: “This important comparison of various fisheries management systems over time demonstrates the critical need to move past unregulated open-access fishing in resource poor countries around the world. This empirical evidence demonstrates how both fishers and their supporting ecosystems can and do benefit from restrictions and improved management,”

###
Critical support for McClanahan’s work was provided by the Tiffany & Co. Foundation. 

Study finds seine net elimination an important step to the recovery of robust fish communities

Marine conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society working in Kenya have found that better fisheries management that includes restricting fishing gear is producing more predatory and longer-lived species and is improving fishing even in adjacent areas where no management is taking place.

During a 10-year study, conservationists recording fish catches found that the implementation of fishing regulations—and particularly the banning of small-mesh seine nets that indiscriminately capture all fish—allowed practically all fish species to recover, especially those species that took longer to reproduce. Fish communities in regulated sites also had a greater diversity of predatory fish species and those with longer life spans. Even in unregulated areas there were small improvements to the fish community.

The study appears in the February print version of Fisheries Management and Ecology. The authors of the study include Dr. Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society and Christina Hicks of James Cook University in Australia.

The study examined the effects of increasing fisheries management and fishing gear restrictions in 11 coral reef sites along the 75-kilometer stretch of Kenyan coast around the city of Mombasa for a 10-year period.

The wholesale removal of fine-mesh seine nets was implemented in six sites to the south of Mombasa, all of which were more than 30 kilometers away from areas closed to fishing. Kenyatta Beach—a landing site and popular tourist destination near Mombasa Marine National Park—served as the study’s most intensively regulated site. The northernmost sites, where fishermen continued to use seine nets in spite of restrictions, were within five kilometers of the fisheries closure zones. In addition to seine nets, other types of gear examined in the study were traps, lines, regular nets, and spears.

“The study shows that regulating coastal fisheries allows fish populations to recover in a number of predictable ways that correspond with knowledge of the biology and ecological characteristics of individual species, but also that the recovery was faster then predicted for some species,” said Dr. Tim McClanahan, WCS Senior Conservationist and head of the society’s coral reef research and conservation program.

From February 1998 to August 2007, researchers identified and measured individual fish from 152 species caught at each of the 11 sites—with 15 species representing approximately 90 percent of the data pool—as well as recording the gear used. On average, all fish species from regulated sites over the course of the study increased in body length over time, with two species—the rabbitfish (averaging a short lifespan of 5.9 years) and seagrass parrotfish (averaging a intermediate lifespan of 7.7 years)—exhibiting the most significant size increases following fishing regulations. The unregulated northern sites were dominated by short-lived herbivorous species and the very few species that were able to escape the gaps of small-meshed nets.

Predictably, the largest and longest lived fish were landed at the most regulated site (Kenyatta), and the smallest in the least regulated. Further, spears and gill nets caught the largest fish in the study, whereas the smallest were caught in seines and lines. Also, fish body lengths in the sites where seine net bans were implemented and enforced during the study were growing to the same lengths as fish from the most regulated site by the end of the study.

Dr. McClanahan said the improvements even in the unregulated areas suggest that strong management can improve conditions in adjacent areas where management is weak.

“This can lead to either free loading on the nearby stronger management or increased interests in participating in the improved management, depending on the interests, incentives, and organization of the fishing and management community,” McClanahan said.

The study builds on a previous WCS study from the same sites on the costs and revenues of local fisheries along the coast of Kenya, which was published last year in Conservation Biology and demonstrated that effective fisheries management actually yields more profits for fishermen. In terms of income, fishermen working in Kenyatta experienced a 60 percent increase in revenue (from 224 up to 374 Kenya shillings, or $3 up to $5) following the beach seine ban in 2001. By contrast, daily income in the northern sites averaged $2 per person between 2002-2007. Overall, fishing revenue in the southern landing sites (all of which banned beach seines during the study period) was 41 percent higher than northern coast sites with the beach seines; Kenyatta’s fishing revenue climbed to 135 percent higher than northern sites after seine elimination.

Dr. Caleb McClennen, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Marine Program, said: “This important comparison of various fisheries management systems over time demonstrates the critical need to move past unregulated open-access fishing in resource poor countries around the world. This empirical evidence demonstrates how both fishers and their supporting ecosystems can and do benefit from restrictions and improved management,”

###
Critical support for McClanahan’s work was provided by the Tiffany & Co. Foundation.

More than a third of coral reef fish species are in jeopardy of local extinction from the impacts of climate change on coral reefs, a new scientific study has found.
 
(Local extinction refers to the loss of species from individual locations, while they continue to persist elsewhere across their range.)
 
A new predictive method developed by an international team of marine scientists has found that a third of reef fishes studied across the Indian Ocean are potentially vulnerable to increasing stresses on the reefs due to climate change.
 
The method also gives coral reef managers vital insights to better protect and manage the world’s coral reefs, by showing that local and regional commitment to conservation and sustainable fisheries management improves prospects for coral recovery and persistence between storms and bleaching events.
 
The team applied their ‘extinction risk index’ to determine both local and global vulnerability to climate change and human impacts. They tested the method by comparing fish populations before and after the major 1998 El Nino climate event which caused massive coral death and disruption across the Indian Ocean.
 
In all, 56 of the 134 coral fish species studied were found to be at risk from loss of their habitat, shelter and food sources caused by climate change. Those most in jeopardy were the smaller fishes with specialised eating and sheltering habits. Because most of these species have wide geographic ranges and often quite large local populations, few were at particular risk of global extinction.
 
“The loss of particular species can have a critical effect on the stability of an entire ecosystem – and our ability to look after coral reefs depends on being able to predict which species or groups of fish are most at risk,” explains lead author Dr Nick Graham of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University. “Until now, the ability to do this has been fairly weak.”
 
“For example, we know that the loss of seaweed-eating grazing fishes can lead to coral reefs which have suffered some other form of disturbance being replaced by weeds. Protecting these fish, on the other hand, gives the corals a much better chance to recover.
 
“Where there is a widespread death of corals from a climate-driven event such as bleaching, the fish most affected are the ones that feed or shelter almost exclusively on coral. However when corals die off and the reef structure collapses, small reef fish generally are much more exposed to predators.
 
“By understanding which species and groups of fish are most at risk, we can better manage coral reefs and fish populations to ensure their survival in times of increasing human and climate pressure,” adds Dr Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
 
The study does, however, offer encouragement by showing that the fish most at risk from climate change are seldom those most at risk from overfishing or other direct human impacts, pointing to scope to manage reef systems and fishing effort in ways that will protect a desirable mix of fish species that promote ecosystem stability.  
 
“Critically, the species of fish that are important in controlling seaweeds and outbreaks of deleterious invertebrate species are more vulnerable to fishing than they are to climate change disturbances on coral reefs. This is encouraging, since local and regional commitment to fisheries management action can promote coral recovery between disturbances such as storms and coral bleaching events,” explains Dr McClanahan.
 
They conclude that identifying the fish species most at risk and most important to ecosystem stability and then managing coral reefs to maintain their populations will help ‘buy time’ while the world grapples with the challenge of limiting carbon emissions and the resulting climate change.
 
The team adds that their novel approach to calculating extinction risk has wider application to conservation management beyond coral reef ecosystems and can readily apply to other living organisms and sources of stress.
 
Their paper “Extinction vulnerability of coral reef fishes” by Nicholas A. J. Graham, Pascale Chabanet, Richard D. Evans, Simon Jennings , Yves Letourneur, M. Aaron MacNeil, Tim R. McClanahan, Marcus C. Öhman, Nicholas V. C. Polunin and Shaun K. Wilson appears in the latest issue of the journal Ecology Letters.
 
More information:
Dr Tim McClanahan, WCS, USA +1 530 525 5407 or +1 415 205 8869
Dr Nick Graham, CoECRS and JCU, Australia +61 7 4781 6291 or +61 466 432 188

A paper on “Resource degradation of the sea cucumber fishery in Zanzibar, Tanzania: a need for management reform” by B. Hampus Eriksson, Maricela de la Torre-Castro, Johan Eklöf  and Narriman Jiddawi, was recently published in the Aquat. Living Resour. 23, 387–398 (2010), DOI: 10.1051/alr/2011002. This paper was presented in the Sixth WIOMSA Symposium held in Reunion in August 2009. The abstract is attached below:

 This study assessed the Zanzibar sea cucumber fishery using a multidisciplinary approach. Data was collected by (i) interviewing various groups of actors in the fishery and reviewing management documentation and legislation, (ii) by monitoring catches and (iii) through a visual census of coastal sea cucumber populations in areas open and closed to fishing. The fishery showed clear signs of being unsustainable with high fishing effort, and weak formal and informal management institutions. The fishery operation was characterised by an intricate cross-scale structure with both fishers and sea cucumber products being transported across national borders. The visual census of commercial sea cucumber stocks at three sites open to fishing around Zanzibar showed low densities across the range of sea cucumber value groups including low value species. Furthermore, the diversity of commercial sea cucumber species was lower in fished reefs than on a protected reef. The poor status of the sea cucumber populations was confirmed by the perception of an overfished resource by the interviewed actors active in the fishery. This was also depicted by the paucity of high value species, and high representation of low value and newly commercialised species in fishers catch. We conclude that the current state of Zanzibar’s sea cucumber populations is compromising the fisheries self-replenishment and existence and that the fishery is in urgent need of a complete management reform.

It’s difficult to talk about climate change without a touch of desperation. The news we hear is grim. From failed talks, to extreme warming events in our seas, species in danger, floods, droughts and crop failures. The world is indeed in peril. But slowly this harsh reality is beginning to be tempered with stories of hope. We hear now about activities to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The latest Zwazo, Seychelles conservation magazine published by Nature Seychelles, brings you some of these stories. Read more from http://natureseychelles.org/~naturese/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=410:zwazo-22-tackles-climate-change&catid=73&Itemid=165 

Announcement of a 2-years Master program in Limnology & Oceanography at the University of Amsterdam

For students who would like to specialize in aquatic or marine sciences, the MSc program Limnology & Oceanography in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, might be of interest. In this master you will learn about the functioning of freshwater and marine ecosystems in general. And of special interest for Coral-list readers: two courses in the program are focused on Coral reefs: the theoretical course ‘Coral Reef Ecosystems’ in Amsterdam and the field course ‘Tropical Marine Biology’ in Curaçao (at the marine research station Carmabi).

For further information see:

http://www.studeren.uva.nl/msc_limnology_and_oceanography <http://www.studeren.uva.nl/msc_limnology_and_oceanography> <http://www.studeren.uva.nl/msc_limnology_and_oceanography> 

or

http://studiegids.uva.nl/web/uva/sgs/en/p/8_sce_2716.html <http://studiegids.uva.nl/web/uva/sgs/en/p/8_sce_2716.html> <http://studiegids.uva.nl/web/uva/sgs/en/p/8_sce_2716.html> 

or

contact the program coordinator: Petra Visser (p.m.visser@uva.nl <mailto:p.m.visser@uva.nl> <mailto:p.m.visser@uva.nl>  )

This year, the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania is celebrating 50 years since it was established. To commemorate this auspicious occasion, all major units of the University have set aside some time in the course of this calendar year to show-case their unique activities. The Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS), which has been a constituent institute of the University since 1978 has embarked on a week-long “open-door” to exhibit its research products including the services it provides to the community.

The Official Ceremony to launch the week was graced by His Excellency the First Vice President of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, Seif Sharif Hamadi, who is also an alumnus of the University – the Vice President graduated in 1975. He was welcomed to IMS by the Vice Chancellor of the Dar-es-Salaam University, Prof. Rwekaza Mkandala and the Director of IMS Dr. Margareth Kyewalyanga.

The University of Dar-es-Salaam was established in 1961 with six faculties as a constituent college of the University of London. In 1963 it became a campus of the University of East Africa, which also comprised other campuses at Makerere in Kampala and Nairobi in Kenya.

IMS was created in 1978 from the defunct East African Marine Fisheries Research Organization (EAMFRO) a year after the collapse of the East African Community. Thereafter, the United Republic of Tanzania deemed it prudent to place the IMS under the University of Dar-es-Salaam with a clear mandate to: conduct coastal and marine research, to build capacity in this field of research and to provide technical advice to the Government and other public and private institutions in Tanzania.

WIOMSA, on behalf of the Forum for Academic and Research Institutions in the western Indian Ocean, take this opportunity to celebrate this achievement with IMS and the University of Dar-es-Salaam; and to wish them more success in the next 50 more years and beyond.