Fishery trends, resource-use and management system in the Ungwana Bay fishery Kenya

The present study assessed trends in resource-use, partitioning and management in the Ungwana Bay fishery, Kenya, using surplus production models. The fishery is one of East Africa’s important marine fisheries sustaining a bottom trawl commercial fishery and a resident-migrant artisanal fishery. Two models: Schaefer (1954) and Gulland and Fox (1975) were applied to catch-effort data over a 21-year period to model maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and optimal effort ( f MSY) to examine the status of resource exploitation and provide reference points for sustainable management. In the artisanal fishery, model MSYs range from 392–446 t to 1283–1473 t for shrimps and fish respectively compared to mean annual landings of 60 t for shrimp and 758 t for fish. These landings represent