- A new strategy by government agencies, scientists and coastal community members proposes a working plan of 19 goals to reverse the steep decline of sharks and rays in Kenya.
- As small-scale fishers have a lot of influence on the marine species’ populations, most of the goals directly involve fishers or try to get them on board to make the conservation strategy a success.
- Goals include alternative fishing gear, different livelihoods to reduce fishing pressure, increasing the number of locally managed marine areas, involvement of fishers in conservation decision-making and more effective enforcement.
- Community fishing representatives say they are on board with the plan but highlight that a few points, like concrete and viable alternative livelihoods, need to be offered to reach the conservation goals.
NAIROBI — On Kenya’s eastern coast, a small-scale fisher lugs the day’s catch onto a table for processing and selling. Chances are, mostly threatened species like the scalloped hammerhead shark and the white-spotted guitarfish will appear on the table.
This is just one example of a wider trend, conservationists say, of how deeply intertwined the fate of endangered sharks and rays is with fishers making a living in the Western Indian Ocean.
In February, to lay out an actionable working plan for shark and ray conservation in Kenya, a group of policymakers, scientists and a community leader published a 19-goal strategy. In it, are over a dozen that directly involve small-scale fishers or try to get them on board to make it a success. The goals include the creation of more locally managed marine areas, the involvement of fishers in conservation decision-making and calls for more effective enforcement of regulations on fishing gear and fishing of endangered species.
Since 2023, Kenya has already had a policy on the conservation of sharks and rays — the National Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks (NPOA-Sharks). However, the action plan is still awaiting government approval. The strategy proposed by stakeholders proposes a way to implement it.
A dozen stakeholders, Kenya’s Fisheries Service and the IUCN Species Conservation Planning Specialist Group, helped develop the strategy due to the steep population decline of many shark and ray species. According to CORDIO East Africa, a research and conservation NGO that led the development of the strategy, Kenya is now one of 10 countries in the world with the most depleted populations of coastal sharks.
Stakeholders say small-scale fishers play no small role in the East African country’s marine ecosystems and economy.
Rhett Bennett, an Africa Regional vice chair of the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group (SSG), said local (artisanal) fishers contribute up to 75% of all fishery landings. However, most of these landings include threatened species. Overfishing by small-scale fishers, inadequate policies and a lack of enforcement of laws on illegal fishing and fishing gear have greatly contributed to the decline of sharks and rays in Kenya and the Western Indian Ocean. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species estimates that nearly 40% of all shark and ray species found in the region are threatened with extinction.
Said Mote, himself a small-scale fisherman and chairman of the Ngomeni Beach Management Unit (community-based organizations of fishers, traders and boat owners who co-manage fisheries with the government), said small-scale fishers do not target the sharks and rays specifically.
“They just cast their nets, and what they catch is what they either take home as food or to the market for sale,” he said.
Besides local markets, there are also ready international markets for sharks and rays. “China, Singapore and other countries in the East have a very high demand for shark fins and other products,” he said.
Kenya Fisheries Service reported that in 2022, a total of 1,080 metric tons of sharks and rays were landed in Kenya’s coast. This made up 4% of the total landings by artisanal fishers in that year.
What are the alternatives?
Mote, who was involved in the development of the strategy, said he looks forward to its implementation. But for the conservation of sharks and rays to be achieved, he told Mongabay, fishers need viable alternatives.
“Small-scale fishers have no problem. They need to be trained and informed on the right thing. If we are being told to stop using one type of fishing method, give us an alternative,” he said.
One of the strategy’s goals focuses on gear. It recommends the “restriction or exchange of gears into sustainable ones through: mesh size limits; seasonal closures; no take zones; gear restricted areas/zones.” The ideal mesh size, according to CORDIO East Africa, measures 10.2-15.2 centimeters (4-6 inches). It states that this size captures fast-growing and early maturing species and doesn’t retain juveniles. It also has low catches of sharks and rays.
While most fishers and fisheries do not target sharks, Bennett said, most have some level of shark bycatch or incidental catch, due to methods such as the tuna purse seine, longline and gillnet fisheries. One study by CORDIO East Africa found that up to 79% of the landed fisheries species in Kenya are categorized as threatened. Almost all the sharks (97%) and almost half the rays (46%) landed were immature.
This, according to Benedict Kiilu, assistant director at the Kenya Fisheries Service, is due to the high pressure of fishing on the two. Kiilu was among the stakeholders who developed the strategy for the conservation of sharks and rays as well as the NPOA-Sharks.
“They face significant risks because of their life cycles. They live long, and when an organism lives so long, it means that it matures very late in life. They face significant challenges, and when they survive, we are subjecting them to high-pressure fishing,” Kiilu said.
To reduce pressure on sharks and rays, one of the most potentially impactful goals in the strategy — according to the stakeholders — is the development of alternative livelihoods for fishers. But to succeed, sources say it must be culturally acceptable, align with available opportunities and incentivize conservation. Melita Samoilys, a director at CORDIO East Africa, told Mongabay that finding alternative livelihoods for fishers as envisaged in the strategy has to be done collaboratively with different agencies, the government and NGOs.
Sources did not mention any specific alternative livelihoods. But according to Samoilys, CORDIO trains fishers on “financial literacy, about savings, then looking at local enterprises that they can get into.” Some recommendations include the adoption of crab fishing, mariculture and aquaculture.
“We can educate a fisher until he knows every detail of shark biology, but if he lacks a different way to make a living, he remains stuck in a cycle of overexploitation out of pure necessity,” said Charles Makio, the fisheries manager for Bahari Hai, a community-based organization that runs a sharks and rays conservation program in Kilifi.
According to Mote, communities and small-scale fishers he knows are ready to identify and protect breeding areas of sharks and rays by designating them as seasonal closures, per one of the goals of the strategy.
“Once we do this and we know that, say from April to August, sharks breed in the area, the fishermen will know not to fish in those areas or use only the fishing gear allowed for that area, which can’t catch the sharks and especially the juvenile ones,” he said.
More LMMAs
Kenya’s coast has seen the creation of several locally managed marine areas (LMMAs), locally referred to as co-managed areas, since 2015, when there were 24. The strategy calls for more.
According to Samoilys, increasing LMMAs will give fishers and communities control — as well as a sense of control — of the fishing methods and marine resources in waters they’ve navigated for decades. This line of thinking is also applied to actively engaging fishers in research activities and integrating local ecological knowledge to locate critical habitats. This agency can ultimately increase their buy-in to shark and ray conservation efforts, sources say.
“You can have areas where there is no fishing at all, which are often called ‘no-take zones,’ and the best way to do those is through co-management area legislation,” she said. “So, what really came out of the workshop and working with fishers is for fishers to really want to do it themselves, to comply with efforts that will improve the status of sharks and rays.”
As a leader of small-scale fishers, Mote said he is not opposed to the creation of more LMMAs.
“In Kilifi county alone, we have fishing grounds measuring 1,339.15 square km [517 square mi]. The ground is huge. We can agree to set aside Ungwana Bay for six months or leave Sabaki area for a whole year because it is a breeding zone, as we fish in other areas,” he told Mongabay.
The LMMAs operate mostly as closures (either permanent or seasonal) but also incorporate marine management projects. For instance, in Wasini and Mkwiro in Kwale county to the south and Kuruwitu in Kilifi to the north, they do coral restoration in their tengefu (the Swahili word for set-aside). Some undertake mangrove restoration with carbon credit projects, while others have tourism activities.
The strategy also encourages mapping all the existing LMMAs to better understand if they should be increased in size or combined to create larger ones.
Stepping up enforcement
For enforcement to be undertaken as envisaged in the strategy, Makio said there needs to be “absolute clarity on fisheries regulations.”
At the moment, he said, for fishers, it is very unclear from the Fisheries Act and the Wildlife (Conservation and Management) Act as well as their amendments which elasmobranch species are protected. Or, for example, that gill net mesh size restrictions exist for lakes, but not at sea.
“What is the species-specific definition of juveniles that shouldn’t be caught or what are the repercussions of violating the laws?” He paused. If the rules are confusing or poorly enforced, he said, the sharks pay the price.
For Samoilys, a more lenient approach, one that provides information for fishers through training, would lead to compliance and hence protection of sharks and rays.
“I personally feel building compliance is essential, actually, because once fishers have that knowledge and they understand what’s best for their own livelihoods, their fishing livelihoods and the species that they like to catch, they will do the right thing,” she said.
But to enforce these alternatives, like fishing gear, Kiilu said he sees a challenge.
The strategy underlines existing enforcement issues by the government and has goals to address them with agencies, but even if the BMUs (the community organizations) were to step up, there are issues, he told Mongabay. According to him, since the members of the BMUs are community members familiar with each other, enforcement might be a challenge, which could hamper conservation.
“They still have this ‘clanic’ way of approaching things, that this is my brother, this is my neighbor, how do I enforce the laws on him? But we are trying to change that through sensitization,” he told Mongabay.
Ultimately, Bennett said, the power of the strategy will be defined by how well it is implemented, “and the will of all stakeholders to see strengthened conservation for sharks and rays.”
Kiilu said he is confident the implementation will start immediately, and the government will focus on enforcement. The strategy requires action from his institution, the Kenya Fisheries Service, in conjunction with the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Kenya Coast Guard, he told Mongabay.
On her part, Samoilys of CORDIO East Africa said a strong point in the strategy is awareness raising among fishers and the general coastal community.
“This is something that we definitely work on,” she said. “We do a lot of training and awareness raising sensitization of coastal communities in different aspects of the coastal environment — but particularly on sharks and rays.”
Banner image: Fisherman Chapoka Miongo speaks from his traditional dugout canoe at the Shimoni channel, in Kwale county, Kenya, in 2022. Image by AP Photo/Brian Inganga.
Kenyan fishers put new twists on an age-old marine conservation system
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Citation:
Osuka, K. E., Samoilys, M. A., Musembi, P., Thouless, C. J., Obota, C., & Rambahiniarison, J. (2024). Status and characteristics of sharks and rays impacted by artisanal fisheries: potential implications for management and conservation. Marine and Fishery Sciences (MAFIS), 38(1). https://doi.org/10.47193/mafis.3812025010101
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