Sierra Leone - State of the Marine Environment 2015

and coastal vegetation. The Freetown harbor is the best natural harbor along the West African coast. International commercial vessel traffic to and from Sierra Leone has however been low over the past years since the rebel war started in 1991. Traders and other business class people travel by sea to neighbouring countries (Guinea and Liberia) mainly by medium size boats, ferries and catamarans. This limits the amount of goods they transport. It is also an important means of transporting goods to and from Freetown to landing sites in the north and south of the country. Two other ports, point Sam and Nitty mainly serve the mining industry. Urban Expansion One of the consequences of urban expansion is the increase in sand extraction and the risk of accelerated coastal erosion. Urbanization is also associated with a population increase and the attendant problems of waste generation and disposal as well as putting pressure on the use of other coastal resources e.g. mangroves. Tourism, Recreation and Seaside Residences Tourism, recreation and seaside residences also contribute to the degradation of coastal ecosystems through increased effluent discharge into coastal waters and beach litter as well as to coastal population increase. These development activities may interfere with biological migration flyways and flyway stop over sites. Worst areas include the Freetown peninsula tourist area.

Fishing The most common methods of fishing involve the use of cast and ring nets, and hook and line, trawling, longlining and purse seining. Since the common method of catch preservation is drying, fuel wood is widely used, the main source of which are the mangroves. Different kinds of fish drying kilns are used but the traditional ‘bandas’ are the most popular. Fish landing sites are often polluted with huge piles of rubbish as inhabitants of the fishing communities often try to reclaim land from the sea. Worst areas include all fishing villages along the coast. 1.5. Methodology This report is the product of a desktop compilation of reports and studies, conference and seminar papers as well as personal communications, in combination with the outcomes of an assessment of the state of the marine environment using the expert elicitation (EE)methodology. The expert elicitation methodology is essentially a scientific consensus methodology, aimed at generating an assessment of any chosen parameters by synthesising information available in existing assessments, scientific publications and data in conjunction with the subjective judgment of experts across a broad base of evidence related to those parameters. In the assessment workshop, grading scores are given for three aspects of each condition parameter: 1) the condition in the worst-impacted 10% of the region under consideration; 2) the condition in the least-impacted 10% of

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