7.1 Guinea
7.2 Guinea Bissau
7.3 Senegal/Gambia area and southern Mauritania
Both trawlers and canoes operate off Guinea. According to information existing in CECAF files, there are 10 Guinean flag ice trawlers plus 28 freezer trawlers belonging to the Guinea/Afrofish Company. There are also 8 Soviet freezers, presumably landing frozen fish in Conakry. Prom 1971 to December 1976, 52 trawlers operated in Guinean waters landing their catches in Conakry (Zupanovic and Cissé, Appendix 8). These included Guinean as well as foreign flag vessels. According to Aubray (1976), the 'Office des Pêches Maritimes' (OPEMA) operated 7 out of the 10 local vessels during 1976. The rest belonged to SONIGUI, a Guinea/Japanese joint venture company. There are also 8 Italian trawlers. The number of artisanal canoes is estimated at 3 000 (Zupanovic and Cissé, Appendix 8). No information was available to the group on fishing grounds.
At present, catches of trawlers either locally based or chartered are landed in Conakry. Landings of all trawlers are presented in Table 5.
Table 5 Landings of trawlers operating from Conakry (Guinea)
|
Year |
1971 |
1972 |
1973 |
1974 |
1975 |
1976 |
|
Total landings (in metric tons) |
3 383 |
7 288 |
9 658 |
12 442 |
14 301 |
13 017 |
Source: Direction de la Production, Conakry (Guinea)Trawlers belonging to OPEMA and the joint venture companies landed 10 224 tons during the first six months of 1977 (Zupanovic and Cissé, Appendix 8). Table 6 gives catch and effort data of vessels belonging to Guinea/Afrofish, a joint company, from December 1976 to June 1977.
According to Zupanovic and Cissé (Appendix 8), the estimated artisanal catch is 7 000 tons, 30 percent of which is of demersal fish species.
Data on the fisheries of Guinea Bissau are scanty. However, according to information existing in CECAF files, 25 French, 5 Senegalese and 4 Ghanaian (one trawler and 3 purse seiners) vessels are permitted to fish in the waters of Guinea Bissau.
The main fishing company, Estrela do Mar (a Guinea Bissau/Soviet joint venture), has 7 Soviet trawlers and a carrier fishing in Guinea Bissau waters for fin fish and shrimps.
Table 6 Catch and effort of Guinea/Afrofish (joint venture) trawlers
|
North |
Days fishing |
Catch (kg) |
Mean catch per day |
|
December 1976 |
7 |
22 800 |
3 200 |
|
January 1977 |
198 |
895 860 |
4 525 |
|
February 1977 |
180 |
751 880 |
4 177 |
|
March 1977 |
254 |
863 020 |
3 398 |
|
April 1977 |
208 |
747 732 |
3 599 |
|
May 1977 |
269 |
921 428 |
3 425 |
|
June 1977 |
214 |
589 280 |
2 854 |
|
Total |
1 330 |
4 792 000 |
3 603 |
Source: Office guinéen de pêche, Conakry (Guinea)A private company 'Peralta' has five small vessels. Each of these vessels carries a net which is operated by canoes. The vessels do not fish but carry the fish of the canoes ashore. Each of the vessels can carry up to about 3 tons of fish.
There are two other joint venture companies, GUIALP (Sociedade Guineo Argelina de Pesca) and SEMAPESCA (Sociedade de Economia Mixta de Armemento e de Pesca de Cacheu). GUIALP has 5 stern trawlers of 100 gross tonnage each with 472 HP engines. The company has 2 other old side trawlers. Due to operational difficulties only 2 of these vessels have been fishing sporadically. Since 1976, only 140 tons of fish and 140 kg of shrimps have been caught. There is very little information on the artisanal sector.
In 1976, the catch of Estrela do Mar was about 3 557 tons of which 2 109 tons were exported to Nigeria, Liberia and Senegal. In the same year the company exported 87.6 tons of shrimp to Dakar and 14.7 were tons sold locally. Catches of the other companies as well as of the artisanal sector are not available.
Scattered catch and effort data are available for the by-catch of the Senegalese shrimp fishery in the northern part of Guinea Bissau (lat. 11°30'N).
A more detailed description of the fisheries in this sector is given in Appendix 9 of this report. Trawling began during 1950 in Senegal. Until 1965, the traditional fishing grounds of trawlers were south of Dakar to the Casamance area. It is possible that the trawlers operated as far south as Guinea Bissau. Prom 1965, trawling activities concentrated on shrimp fishing grounds. Prom 1971, too many trawlers were engaged in the shrimp fishery and part of the fishing effort was shifted to the area between 11°30' and 16°N and concentrated at 60-80 m depth. Prom 1974, the fishing grounds were extended to the edge of the continental shelf between 80 and 200 m depth.
Changes in geographical as well as bathymétrie distribution of fishing are reflected in the species composition of the catches. Until 1965, hard bottom species (Pagellus coupei, Diagramma mediterraneum, Dentex spp., Pagrus ehrenbergi, Epinephelus goreensis, B. gigas, Pseudupeneus prayensis) dominated the catches. Between 1965 and 1970, soft bottom species (shrimp, Cynoglossus sp., Pseudotolithus spp. and Galeoides decadactylus) started to predominate. Between 1971 and 1974 deep sea species (Brotula barbata and deep sea breams) appeared in the catches. At the same period the exploitation of cephalopods commenced in the south.
The tonnage of fish landed between 1960 and 1965 fluctuated between 2 500 and 5 000 tons. From 1965 to 1970, fish landings decreased due to the conversion of the trawl fleet to shrimpers. Fish landings were in the neighbourhood of 1 500 tons. The diversification of the fleet from 1971 led to a rapid increase in landings, from 1 500 to 17 000 tons. Shrimp catches also increased from 55 to 1 500 tons between 1965 and 1971, then stabilized around 3 000 tons.
The size of the fleet increased from 10 to 90 vessels between 1960 and 1973 and stabilized thereafter around 85.
