Abstract
Most West African lagoons are very productive ecosystems that support important fishery activities. However, increases in human populations put heavy pressure on their resources. This raised the importance of sustainable management tools for these ecosystems. Length-Weight Relationships (LWRs) which is an important fish stock assessment tool was investigated in the Aby lagoon, southeastern Cote d'Ivoire. Fishes were caught monthly from February 2012 through March 2013 using gillnets. Fishes captured were identified, weighted to the nearest gram and standard length was measured to the nearest millimeter. The 30 fish species selected for this study belong to 18 families. The highest species number (n = 7) was recorded for Cichlidae family. All length-weight regressions were significant with a coefficient of determination (r²) varying from 0.462 (Parailia pellucida) to 0.984 (Elops lacerta). Growth coefficient, b of the LWR ranged from 2.229 (P. pellucida) to 3.811 (Eleotris vittata). Nineteen species exhibited negative allometric growth pattern while 11 had positive allometric growth. These results are useful references for West African coastal lagoon management and particularly for that of the Aby lagoon system.
Highlights
Worldwide, lagoon systems represent 13% of the coastline (Knoppers, 1994) and together with other coastal ecosystems contribute a large part of the ecological richness of the biosphere (Costanza et al, 1997)
The present study describes the length-weight relationships for 30 coastal fish species in the Aby lagoon system which supports important fishery activities in south east Côte d’Ivoire
Fish size was as small as 28.9 mm Standard Length (SL) (28.6 g body weight) in Chrysichthys nigrodigitatus and as large as 400 mm (1145 g body weight) in C. nigrodigitatus
Summary
Lagoon systems represent 13% of the coastline (Knoppers, 1994) and together with other coastal ecosystems contribute a large part of the ecological richness of the biosphere (Costanza et al, 1997). Studies performed in Ebrie lagoon (Côte d’Ivoire) showed that fishing pressure could induced important changes on the fish community (Albaret and Laë, 2003): the main changes included lowering of fish diversity in catches, fish biomass, average catch length and trophic level of catches. These data raised the importance of management tools for a sustainable use of fisheries resources in these lagoons. There is an urgent need to manage and regulate the small-scale coastal fishery in the region (Albaret and Laë, 2003; Njifonjou et al, 2006) and this requires basic population dynamics information for the target species
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