Johnstone O. Omukoto

Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) · Marine and Coastal Fisheries Research

Burdened with food insecurity and inadequate nutrition, countries in the Global South have ample margins to benefit from more consideration for fish and aquatic foods for better nutrition. This article proposes the case of Kenyan coastal fisheries as a potentially crucial reservoir of food-related benefits for the poor and local communities, provid...

Marine artisanal fisheries play an important role among Kenyan coastal communities, making a vital contribution to livelihoods and food security. Nevertheless, the contribution of this fishery sector to the national fishery and the gross domestic product (GDP) is low and minimal investments have been pumped back into the sector both in terms of bud...

Wild-caught fish provide an irreplaceable source of essential nutrients in food-insecure places. Fishers catch thousands of species, yet the diversity of aquatic foods is often categorized homogeneously as ‘fish’, obscuring an understanding of which species supply affordable, nutritious and abundant food. Here, we use catch, economic and nutrient d...

Coastal communities in the Tana estuary, Kenya, rely on a variety of economic sectors linked to ecosystem services , including small-scale fisheries (SSF), commercial prawn fisheries, and tourism. Despite its environmental and social importance, the estuary has been negatively impacted by overexploitation, pollution, and climate change. As a result...

The sustainability of coral reef fisheries is jeopardized by complex and interacting socio-ecological stressors that undermine their contribution to food and nutrition security. Climate change has emerged as one of the key stressors threatening coral reefs and their fish-associated services. How fish nutrient concentrations respond to warming ocean...

Bottom trawling is a common fishing method that targets bottom-dwelling fisheries resources. It is non-selective and large amounts of by-catch are discarded, raising serious sustainability and ecosystem conservation concerns. In this study, a shallow-water bottom-trawl fishery was evaluated using logbook catch data between 2011 and 2019 and the spe...

Household survey data and spatially explicit Sentinel-2 satellite images of land cover and land use during the dry and wet seasons were used to investigate livelihood strategies in the Lower Tana River Delta in Kenya, where food security and economic activity rely almost exclusively on ecosystem goods and services. Land cover classification of sate...

The economic potential of Kenya marine resources is critical for the socioeconomic development. The current study reports fisheries output from marine systems in Kenya as a priority for Blue Economy investment in order to rival the current production from inland systems as a trigger for sustainable development. The assessment of fish landings and e...

Climate change is projected to cause significant reductions in global fisheries catch during the 21st Century. Yet, little is understood of climate change impacts on tropical fisheries, which support many livelihoods, as is the case in the Western Indian Ocean region (WIO). Here, we focus on two central WIO countries ― Kenya and Tanzania ― and run...

Commercial bottom prawn trawling has been reported to generate a higher proportion of by-catch of up to 70% in Kenya. The Tigertooth croaker, Otolithes ruber is one of the species caught in large quantities as commercial by-catch and also by artisanal fishers. This has led to growing concern that the species could be at risk of over-exploitation. T...

The economic potential of Kenya marine resources is critical for the socioeconomic development. The current study reports fisheries output from marine systems in Kenya as a priority for Blue Economy investment in order to rival the current production from inland systems as a trigger for sustainable development. The assessment of fish landings and e...

Anthropogenic and ecological impacts affect not only the environment, but also the livelihoods of the fishers and communities reliant on them. It is, therefore, crucial to study the entire chain of well-being for an ecosystem, from changing environmental conditions, to the impacts of humans and social processes, to the effect of high-level policies...

This study presents a participatory assessment of overfished small-scale fisheries from selected landing sites in coastal Kenya using mixed quantitative and qualitative research methods. A seven-criteria ranking using a modified Delphi questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale was used. Through a process of scoring the fisheries on these crite- ria...

Microplastics can be ingested by marine organisms and may lead to negative impacts at the base of marine food chains. This study investigated the occurrence and composition of microplastics in the sea-surface water and sought evidence of ingestion by zooplankton. Surface seawater was collected using a stainless-steel bucket and sieved directly thro...

The report collated and reviewed existing information on key commercial fisheries along the Kenyan coast, and conducted a risk assessment of the key commercial fisheries to identify potential priority species for stock assessment under the KCDP project

The Malindi-Ungwana bay (latitudes 3o30′S and 2o30′S and longitudes 40o00′N and 41o 00′N) is an important fishing ground in Kenya, exploited by both commercial shallow water prawn trawlers and well as artisanal fishers. The prawn trawl fishery within the bay has been affected by conflicts due resources use concerns. To address some of the concerns,...

Significance Environmental management inevitably involves trade-offs among different objectives, values, and stakeholders. Most evaluations of such trade-offs involve monetary valuation or calculation of aggregate production of ecosystem services, which can mask individual winners and losers. We combine a participatory, modeling, and scenarios appr...

Degradation of aquatic ecosystems in the Lake Victoria basin (LVB) and the rest of East Africa has elicited concern because of its bearing on social and economic development. Rapid population growth, industrialization and its associated urbanization, agricultural intensification and habitat loss have increased pressure on the integrity of water res...

We tested the unsustainable fishing hypothesis that species in assemblages of fish differ in relative abundance as a function of their size, growth rates, vagility, trophic level, and diet by comparing species composition in historical bone middens, modern fisheries, and areas closed to fishing. Historical data came from one of the earliest and mos...

Abstract Catch composition, relative abundance and diversity of fish catches in open access and three old fisheries closures were compared and contrasted with previous ecological studies. There was less variation in catch community composition among the fishing grounds than the closures, suggesting that fishing has homogenised catch composition. Th...

Recent temperature histories and benthic surveys of Madagascaŕs coral reefs are presented from 3 disparate regions in order to develop an understanding of the relationship between sea surface temperature (SST) and benthic cover, coral diversity, and community structure. Results indicate the presence of distinct temperature zones influenced by wind...

Colony size is an important life-history characteristic of corals and changes in colony size will have significant effects on coral populations. This study summarizes ∼21,000 haphazard colony size measurements of 26 common coral taxa (mostly coral genera) collected annually between 1992 and 2006 in seven Kenyan reef lagoons. There was a major coral...