Journal of Coastal Zone Management AbstractMigration of fishers and fish workers is common in Africa. It affects the ways the people use and manage natural resources. This paper examines and reviews fisheries driven human migrations in the Gulf of Guinea and offer insight into the developmental implications underlying the immigrant and emigrants fishing activities. Fisheries driven human migration has deep historical in the Gulf of Guinea. It probably started in the sub-region before 15 th century. With most fisheries being small-scale, they are exploited under some sort of open access regime, sometimes enforced by modern governments, even though traditionally social mechanisms may have existed to restrict such access. It was realized that migration has both positive and negative effects on communities of destinations as well as migrants' home countries. Migrants contribute to the GDP of their destination countries and also support their families back. There have been conflicts as results of migrants fishing and in some cases resulted in political interferences. Migrants have limited privileges in some destinations. Migrants in some cases have no rights to own a land. Drawing on some of the generalities across the twelve countries that make up the Gulf of Guinea, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, and Nigeria are documented and perceived to have had major fisheries-driven human migrations in the sub-region. Traditionally, it is assumed that population is the main driven force behind migration. However, it observed that fisheries-related human migration has other main triggers. Seasonality of fisheries resources due to climate changes and upwelling regimes along the hot spots of Gulf of Guinea coast is possibly the most significant cause of fisherfolks seasonal migration which normally last for a period of 6 months. Socio-economic standings and political stability are major determining factors of long or permanent fisheries-related migration. Long-term migration of fishers spans over years. Fisheries driven migration is male-dominated and it has a clear gender-labour division in the sub-region. The few women who migrate with their husbands are mainly fish processors and fish mongers. The prospects for continued fishers and fish workers migration is high and it anticipated that seasonality of different fisheries regime will dictate the pace tempospatial dynamics of the fisher folks mobility. As there is no clear sign of a halt to fisheries related-human migration in the Gulf of Guinea, the need to raise public awareness and to improve knowledge on the danger of HIV/AIDS on their household and livelihood among fisher folks is also crucial.

Assessing the exploitation status of main fisheries resources in Ghana's reservoirs based on reconstructed catches and a length-based bootstrapping stock assessment method. Lake Reserv Manage. 35:415-434. The cichlid species Oreochromis niloticus, Sarotherondon galilaeus, and Coptodon zillii, which are among the most exploited resources in the small-scale fisheries of the Tono, Bontanga, and Golinga reservoirs in northern Ghana, were assessed based on length frequency samples. Growth, mortality, exploitation status, stock size, and relative yield per recruit reference points were determined using bootstrapping fish stock assessment (BFSA), a novel framework that allows for the estimation of uncertainties around the life-history parameters and reference levels (e.g., L 1 , K, and F 0.1). The results suggest that the 3 species studied are heavily exploited in all 3 reservoirs, but with no alarming signs of overexploitation. The fishing effort at Golinga is comparatively low as a result of insignificant fishing during the agriculture season, which relates to low exploitation rates. Sarotherondon galilaeus and C. zillii have the highest and lowest biomass (t/km 2) respectively in all the 3 reservoirs. The small shallow reservoir (Golinga) has the highest biomass of the target resources per unit area. According to a second assessment approach, based on length-based indicators, all species at Bontanga and O. niloticus and S. galilaeus populations at Golinga have spawning stock biomasses below 40% of the unfished biomass. This points to a situation of a possible ongoing recruitment overfishing of those species in the 2 reservoirs and suggests that a further increase in fishing effort should be prevented. Further monitoring of these fisheries will be needed for the improvement of assessments and thus management advice.

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