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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