BUEA, Cameroon — To his fishing peers, Ojah Alfred, 45, is a fisher like they are. But to Cameroon’s scientific community, he is also a scientist — a citizen scientist. For eight years, Alfred, alongside more than 80 other fishers across Cameroon’s three coastal regions, has been collecting data on marine species brought to landing sites and caught out at sea, using the Siren app, a citizen science platform. “I never imagined that the pictures I take every day of fish with the Sirens app would lead to the publication of this ‘big book,’” Alfred told Mongabay, referring to a study published in December in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes. Two daisy stingrays (Dasyatis margarita) and a critically endangered blackchin guitarfish (Glaucostegus cemiculus) displayed for sale at Youpwè Fish Market, Cameroon’s largest fish market, in Douala. Image by Shuimo Trust Dohyee for Mongabay. The “big book” is the first detailed snapshot of shark and ray diversity in the country, helping fill a major knowledge gap that has long hindered conservation and fisheries management. Many of the species being caught in Cameroon’s fisheries are already at risk of extinction worldwide, and the country has no specific laws protecting sharks and rays, according to Ghofrane Labyedh, the study’s lead researcher. The fishers’ data, along with fish market surveys, recorded 45 species of sharks and rays in Cameroon’s waters, of which 36 are considered threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), including 13 classified as critically endangered. Alarmingly, most…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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