Appraisal Of Fishery Management In Eritrea

In developing country context, the fishery sector is increasingly being mentioned as a source of livelihood creation, food security and to generate income. However, the sector has been facing challenges to achieve sustainable development and erroneous fishing management methods have resulted in depletion of fish stocks. In Eritrea, even though the lightly exploited fishery represents an invaluable opportunity, the fishery sector has been struggling to attain continuous expansion in the past60years. The fish catch production has been much lesser than the estimated Maximum sustainable yield.This paper, therefore, addresses the reasons behind the low performance of the Eritrean fishery sector through analyzing the constraints faced in terms of fishery development and management. Nonetheless to do this it will first examine the potential of the Eritrean waters as a whole and also assess the present state of Eritrean fishery by examining the past and present catch production levels. In addition the study explored the country present fishery policy and management frameworks towards exploitation of its marine resources to provide an overview of the institutional environment in which small-scale fishery in Eritrea operates. This study also aims to contribute to the debate on sustainable development of the country lightly exploited fisheries, by recommending future steps that have to be taken to insure boost in production by balancing economic benefits with ecosystem management.The findings of the work portray that fishery in Eritrea is constrained by decade’s long security instability and economic fluctuation which restricted the investment to the sector. Also although this Small-scale fishery is increasingly important to the country, yet they struggle with access to modernized fishing technology, infrastructure, markets, and credit. Over all increased foreign investments, improved fishery export, superior market conditions, fishing technology upgrading and better infrastructure facility will enhance the future development of the fishery industry. Nevertheless for long term sustainable harvest some precautionary fishery management has to be taken equivalent to these adjustments.