Marine fisheries management in Cameroon: overview and perspectives for improvement of the survey system and data collection.

Since 1982, a data-collection system has been in place in Cameroon to obtain statistics for the small-scale marine fisheries sector. Surveys have been conducted in an attempt to determine the impact of fishing effort on the resources, and data collected refer mostly to catch and effort. Although such data may be used for analysis of resource dynamics, they are generally inappropriate for analysing fishing activity in terms of the dynamics of exploitation. The latter analysis is necessary in order to address questions on the developmental capacity of the fisheries sector. With such a collection system, the main sources of uncertainty come from a lack of knowledge of the socio-economic dynamics of fishing communities, including the dynamics of the fishing fleet and technology. Data on those factors are needed to evaluate the impact of resource state and of the socio-economics of the operation on the fishing mortality. More information is therefore needed and a more systemic approach to data collection has been taken. This new approach and its implementation are discussed, taking into consideration catch–effort data as well as the new surveys on fishing units and socio-economic dynamics. These last two include information on fishing strategies (through surveying a fixed set of fishing units), and processing and trade of the fisheries products (through a sample of processors). Some results obtained from these data are presented, and their usefulness for fisheries development and management is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]