The aim of fisheries management is to ensure that the natural resources are exploited such that a balanced stock biomass is maintained. Basic fisheries management measures are geared to controlling the pressure or effort that fishing exerts on the resources, with the International commissions being responsible for promoting and assisting in the definition of scientifically sound management methods.
Since the establishment in 1967 of the Fishery Committee for the eastern Central Atlantic (CECAF), a number of events, including the end of the decolonization process and changes in the Law of the Sea have had serious repercussions on West African fisheries. Some African countries had already unilaterally extended their jurisdiction over coastal waters prior to the opening of the Third Conference on the Law of the Sea in the early seventies. The creation, by the Fishery Committee for the Eastern Central Atlantic (CECAF), of the Sub-Committee for the Management of Resources within the Limits of National Jurisdiction, whose membership was limited to coastal countries, confirmed those countries' responsibility as regards regulation and fishery resources management.
CECAF organized a series of Working Parties between 1977 and 1980 to analyse the most important aspects of the resources of the region, which includes Gulf of Guinea Divisions 34.3.3 and 34.3.4. At the same tome a series of trawl and acoustic surveys were undertaken by local national fishery bodies, either alone or in collaboration with third countries with interests in the fisheries of the area.
Demersal resources assessment surveys conducted in the eighties in order to estimate the biomass in the target area included those carried out in Sierra Lene waters between 1976 and 1982 in collaboration with the USSR, the BELOGORSK expedition which surveyed the Liberian depths in 1981, and the CHALCI surveys carried out in Côte d'Ivoire in 1978–79, 1980 and 1983–84 aboard the R/V ANDRE NIZERY. In Ghana, Fisheries Research and Utilization Branch, Tema, conduced a series of surveys in 1979–80 and 1981–82, aboard the R/V KAKADIAMA.
Two other cruises covering a much wider area and using echo-integration and trawl assessment methods were conducted over the past decade : the R/V DR. FRIDTJOF NANSEN covered the area between Morocco and the Congo in 1981–82, and the R/V CORNIDE DE SAAVEDRA surveyed DECAF Division 34.3.4 in 1986.
No other general trawling surveys have been made in the Gulf of Guinea Divisions 34.3.3.and 34.3.4 (especially on deep-water stocks, about which very little is known) since the Guinean Trawling Survey assessed demersal stocks in the area between Senegal and Angola in 1963-64.
At its Seventh Session in Tenerife in September 1988, the CECAF Sub-Committee for the Management of Resources within the Limits of National Jurisdiction raised the question of the need to carry out a trawling survey in the Sherbro-Benin sector. At that meeting, Spain pledged to finance such a survey.
The Secretatía General de Pasca Marítima (General Secretariat for Marine Fisheries) of the Ministry of Agriculture , Fisheries and food instructed the Spanish Oceanographic Institute (Instituto Español de Oceanografía) to carry out a trawling survey of the area between Sierra Leone and Ghana aboard a commercial fishing vessel.
The final survey plan was approved at the preliminary meeting at the Abidjan Oceanographic Research Centre, attended by all the participating scientists (from Spain and the coastal States) and CECAF representatives.
The survey, entitled “GUINEA 90”, was successfully completed in April 1990 and it is hoped that the findings, presented in this report, will contribute to a better understanding of demersal stocks in the central part of the Gulf of Guinea.
