Fisheries and the Coastal Marine and Island Biodiversity of the Eritrean Red Rea

No poster available.Eritreas Coastal Marine and Island area covers more than 121,000km2,\ud include over 350 offshore islands and 1,350km of coastline (18% of the\ud Red Sea continental coastline) not including the islands. The total coastal\ud mainland population is 73,000, and only ten out of all the islands are\ud inhabited with a total population of about 2,600 in 20 villages. The\ud extensive coral reefs, sea grass meadows and mangroves support globally\ud important biological diversity and maintain the ecological stability and\ud productivity of the Coastal Marine and Island systems. Despite the limited\ud research have been made on the sustainable fish resources and marine\ud biodiversity ,this abundant marine resources has never been exploited for\ud the last quarter of the century due to unstable political situation of the area\ud and low level of technology. The existing estimated potential sustainable\ud fish resources available is (MSY may reach up to 70-\ud 80,000ton/year).Which is Pelagic fishes 55,000 ton/year ,Demersal fishes\ud 10,000 ton /year, Coral fishes 8,000 ton /year, Sharks 5,000 ton /year,\ud Shrimps 5,000 ton /year, Lobster & others 2,000 ton/year. Even though this\ud is the potential maximum sustainable yield, yet now the catch is between 6-\ud 10tons/year with the maximum recorded was in the year 2000 which is\ud 13,000tons with the primitive and old traditional fishing boats. This low\ud fishing activities and pristine marine environment creates a good\ud opportunity to implement strong fisheries and coastal zone management\ud policy on the coastal Marine and island areas of Eritreas waters and yet\ud now two marine protected areas are declared