West Africa, defined as ranging from Morocco in the north to South Africa in the south has extremely rich fisheries resources due to upwelling systems in the northwest and southwest and highly diverse coastal resources in the intervening areas. These resources have been exploited for centuries by local fisheries but have come under tremendous pressure since the 1970s when industrial fisheries started to compete with the artisanal fisheries. A tremendous amount of research documents these interactions and their impacts on the state of the resources. The literature based on this research is however widely scattered, published in different languages and largely inaccessible for decision making.

The Symposium on “Marine fisheries, Ecosystems, and Societies in West Africa: Half a Century of Change” to be held in Dakar, Senegal from in 26-28, 2002 was conceived as a means to synthesize this knowledge and present it in such a way that the impact of fishing on West African ecosystems and generally of change in the last 50 years can be evaluated. This pertains notably to changes in the fisheries (increase in the structure and amount of effort), in the ecosystems (decrease in the biomass of certain groups, shifts in species compositions), and in the industry and its governance.