Journal of Water Resources and Ocean Science 2021; 10(6): 166-174 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/wros doi: 10.11648/j.wros.20211006.11 ISSN: 2328-7969 (Print); ISSN: 2328-7993 (Online) Fish Assemblages and Fishery Analysis at the Mare aux Hippopotames in Burkina Faso Raymond Ouedraogo 1, 2 , Komandan Mano 2, 3, * , Desire Vogna 4 , Florent Marc Yabyoure Sawadogo 2 1 Department of Environment and Forest, Institute for Environment and Agricultural Research, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso 2 Laboratory of Animals Biology and Ecology, University Joseph KI-ZERBO, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso 3 Unit of Training et Research on Life Sciences, University of Dedougou, Dedougou, Burkina Faso 4 National School of Water and Forest, Dinderesso, Burkina Faso Email address: * Corresponding author To cite this article: Raymond Ouedraogo, Komandan Mano, Desire Vogna, Florent Marc Yabyoure Sawadogo. Fish Assemblages and Fishery Analysis at the Mare aux Hippopotames in Burkina Faso. Journal of Water Resources and Ocean Science. Vol. 10, No. 6, 2021, pp. 166-174. doi: 10.11648/j.wros.20211006.11 Received: September 20, 2021; Accepted: October 30, 2021; Published: November 5, 2021 Abstract: Fish populations and the exploitation of water bodies data are essential for the implementation of sustainable fisheries management strategies. Thus, fish diversity, fisheries production and fishermen's income in the «Mare aux Hippopotames» located in western Burkina Faso were studied. This study aims to characterise the fish fauna and fisheries in this natural lake. From 12 to 16 May 2020, experimental fishing was conducted using gillnets with mesh sizes of 10, 20, 35 and 40 mm and cast-nets in five stations. Supplementary data were collected within 22 commercial fishing landings. In total, 1642 fish individuals belonging to 29 species were collected. Twenty-two genera and 13 families were identified. Sarotherodon galilaeus is the dominant species (46.83%) followed by Oreochromis niloticus (11.02%), Brycinus nurse (10.66%). The fish fauna is quite varied and reflects the characteristics of the tropical fish fauna. Length-weight relationship revealed that some fish species have allometric growth while others have isometric growth. The density of fishermen, which is between 0.18 and 0.36 fishers per hectare shows a moderate pressure on the reservoir. The total production of the lake is estimated at 47.85 tonnes per year, i.e. an average yield of 398.78 kg. ha -1 . The average annual income of the fisherman is estimated at 528,000 FCFA. Keywords: Fish Fauna, Fishing, Condition Factor, Income 1. Introduction Aquatic ecosystems are both diverse and sensitive to anthropogenic activities [1]. Thus, natural lakes, artificial lakes and rivers from Africa have been studied extensively [2-4]. Also, some intensive projects [5, 6] made deep researches. However, in the African continent, scientific information has remained scarce, fragmentary, difficult to access, and the statistical methodologies used are often not harmonized [7]. For fish production, as example, yields often seem to be calculated intuitively by empirical procedures or, more recently, by applying indices based on data for other similar water bodies [8]. In the fields, only part of the production is declared and recorded in official statistics [9]. The productions like those of subsistence fisheries are devoted to family consumption and are not taken into account in the statistics. The quantities caught in these fisheries are likely to be very large [10]. According to Béarez [9], the actual fish landings from running waters are about twice higher than those that appear in the catch statistics in Burkina Faso. However, the fisheries administration believes that only 1/3 of the catches are not weighed. Burkina Faso is not provided with large natural water bodies and rivers. Nowadays, the production of capture fisheries tends to stabilize and even decrease, as the stocks are fully or over exploited to satisfy the high demand of fish products and also due to bad environmental, climatic and hydrological conditions. However, hopes of increasing production by opening new