The potential for co-management in fisheries

Concerns have been raised over the sustainability of the fisheries resource base of Lake Victoria for some time. The draft National Fisheries Policy states: "The key issues in the fisheries sector are resource depletion through overfishing aggravated by use of destructive fishing gear and methods" (MAAIF 2000). A fishery is said to be degraded if any or all of the indicators begin to show including decline in catches from the fishery, higher proportion of immature fish in the catch and reduction in the species composition of the catch. Inadequate implementation of fisheries management is considered the main cause of resource degradation. One of the factors identified as constraints to fisheries management has been lack of involvement of the resource users.