Review Evolving trends in the Kenyan artisanal reef fishery and its implications for fisheries management Paul M. Tuda a, b, * , Matthias Wolff a a Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT), Fahrenheitstr. 6, 28359 Bremen, Germany b University of Bremen, Bibliothekstr. 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany article info Article history: Received 18 September 2014 Received in revised form 25 November 2014 Accepted 30 November 2014 Available online Keywords: Fishery Effort Catch Data Artisanal Fish Reef abstract Marine capture fishery in Kenya is small contributing only 4% to the overall fish production in the Country. This is because the fishery is artisanal characterized by relatively simple gears and vessels and has as yet received little attention due to the limited understanding of its contribution to coastal live- lihoods. Nevertheless the Kenyan reefs are considered to be among the most heavily exploited reefs in East Africa. A review of the coastal artisanal fisheries landings for the past sixty years indicates that significant changes have occurred in the fisheries. There has been an increase in effort evidenced by the increased number of fishers, fishing vessels and change in fishing gears. Overall the landings have remained relatively stable over the past decade fluctuating between 5000 tonnes and slightly more than 8000 tonnes annually which are within the range of the predicted sustainable limit of the fishery based on both the Schaefer and fox model prediction of the maximum sustainable yield (MSY). Our estimate of MSY (8264e8543) and the corresponding effort of 11,171e15,467 fishers, derived from the Schaefer and Fox models, would suggest that yields higher than the presently obtained levels cannot be expected in future and that the inter annual variation in total landings may have to do with environmentally trig- gered changes in resource productivity. The model results also suggest that the overall effort of the present fishery already exceeds sustainable effort levels by at least 20%, suggesting a general state of overfishing. Therefore, there is an urgent need to not only apply stricter gear restrictions but also regulate new entrants in to the fishery while improving on the collection and monitoring of catch and effort data. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Artisanal fishery remains one of the most important livelihoods associated with the coral reef ecosystems in tropical countries. Estimated to yield approximately 6 million tonnes annually, the artisanal fishery contributes significantly towards the livelihoods of over 200 million people (Munro, 1996; Teh et al., 2013). The contribution is particularly high in developing countries and is expected to rise given the predicted further increase in population for most coastal cities (Allison and Ellis, 2001), which is expected to exacerbate the pressure on the coral reefs. Nevertheless, artisanal fisheries still remain largely neglected and their contribution overlooked (Pauly, 2006; Worm et al., 2009). On the other hand, there is a growing concern over fisheries in general considering that fish stocks have globally been greatly impacted by fishing (Hilborn et al., 2003; Myers and Worm, 2003). Artisanal fisheries due to their scale of operation have often been considered benign. Characterized by the use of relatively simply fishing gears and small, often not even motorized vessels, the impacts of artisanal fisheries have often been underestimated in comparison to indus- trial fisheries (Hawkins and Roberts, 2004). However, there is mounting evidence suggesting that artisanal fisheries can have serious impacts on coral reefs and fish communities (McClanahan, 1994). In the East African coast, the explosion of sea urchin pop- ulations and the decrease in fish size and biomass is considered to be the direct cause of fishing (McClanahan and Muthiga, 1988; McClanahan and Shafir, 1990). Similarly, fishers density was found to affect the ecological state of the coral reefs leading to lower trophic level of the catches and decreases in the size of target resources (Teh et al., 2013). However, the lack of independent monitoring data limits the extensive evaluation of the full impacts of artisanal fishing making it difficult to get a realistic under- standing of the changes that have occurred in the fishery * Corresponding author. Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT), Fah- renheitstr. 6, 28359 Bremen, Germany. E-mail address: paul.tuda@zmt-bremen.de (P.M. Tuda). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ocean & Coastal Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2014.11.016 0964-5691/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Ocean & Coastal Management 104 (2015) 36e44