Résumé
The West African small scale fisheries is often the main component vs industrial fisheries in biomass landing. More over the small scale fisheries is of major interest at socio economics level and is sometime a cultural activity. In Senegal the number of canoe operating in the sub region is around 16 000 to 22 000 canoes according to the source. Such huge fleet is particularly complex to manage and if industrial fishing fleet can be monitored with ad hoc system as VMS (Vessel Monitoring System) this is not the case (technical limitation) for fishermen canoe. In this work we present the results of a demonstration project showing the interest to monitor the canoe fishing trip using low cost portable autonomous global positioning system (GPS) developed by IRD. During one year some trial have been carry out in Hann a landing site of Dakar (Senegal). Preliminary results show that at a high temporal resolution the GPS allow to distinguish the fishing operation (e.g. line and seine) from the transit and exploration route. Such data allow to improve the estimation of the small scale fisheries fishing effort but also allow to know the maximum distance of operation to check potential interferences with the industrial fishing area (usually between around 6 to 10 nmi). We also report that fishermen based in a landing site can fish in another area and even land is catch in a third landing site, thus ecological and fisheries study made from data collected in landing site must be analyzed with care because au bias that such fishermen behavior can introduce in fisheries studies. The analysis of fishermen kinematics allow to improve the estimation of catchability coefficient, the estimation of economics costs, and allow to set spatial Predator/prey model. Moreover the migration of fisherman from local to regional, which is sensitive in the sub region can be monitored. Conservation authorities can also use this information to check Marine Protected Area frequentation as well as local fishing committees the activities in the protected fishing area (ZPP). We want to underline the interest of such data in fisheries management which can also with little technical improvement play an important role for fishermen security at sea with the implementation of rescue system but also could allow participative data collection (physics and chemical parameters as well as fish sample) from small scale fisheries for manager and fisheries scientist. At the time of miniaturization of electronic component and big data analysis, we recommend the equipment of such system at large scale for small scale fisheries in West Africa.