Case-study /

Gazi fish landing site and beach management unit

image of a fish trader at Gazi beach

The WD-NACE team visited Gazi landing site, an artisinal fishery where more than 100 fishers currently operate in the inshore waters and around the reef. There are around 15 motored and 50 unpowered small fishing vessels and a small number of larger boats. Gazi Beach Management Unit (BMU) manages the fishing grounds, public beach and fish landing site (pictured above), one of the busiest in the South Kenyan Coast. On a wet day in June 2012, during the low season, only a percentage were out to sea. In early afternoon the fishers returned and many fish traders and food sellers (known as mama karanga) were there to meet them (see picture below) as were the WD-NACE research team!

WD-NACE wants understand what drives actors’ decisions and interactions over coastal resources. The governance of artisinal fisheries concerns many different types of users and there are multiple perspectives on what management actions to take. We asked BMU members what they thought about the usefulness of research knowledge and we asked them about their livelihoods. A key message is that despite increasing human pressures and declining catches there are few alternative livelihood opportunities here.

Acknowledgement:

This work was funded by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation programme (ESPA) as project number NE/I00288X/1. ESPA is funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), as part of the UK’s Living with Environmental Change Programme (LWEC).

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