Boaz Kaunda-Arara

Who I am

I was born in Homa-Bay county in Kenya and received a BSc (Hons) in 1988 in wildlife management, an MSc (hydrobiology) in 1993 and a PhD (marine biology) in 2003. I am currently professor of fisheries ecology at the University of Eldoret and have also served as an adjunct professor at Memorial University. My research work has been at the interface of fisheries exploitation and conservation, trying to understand how fisheries affect the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems, especially the marine environment. In this context, I have studied movements of groupers across protected areas and examined fish assemblage structure across a gradient of habitats and exploitation along the Kenyan coast, in addition to other diverse projects emanating from the supervision of various graduate students. I have in the past years developed a keen interest in the conservation of sharks and rays in particular: the effects of trawling on shark assemblages, the influence of fishing on hammerhead populations, and the distribution and abundance of rhino rays within Malindi-Ungwana Bay. I led an initiative to develop a National Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks, which will become one of the few management tools for shark conservation in the Western Indian Ocean region.

Where I work

The project is concentrated in 10 fishing villages spanning the entire coastline of Kenya. These villages have been selected to include active shark landing beaches on the country’s south and north coasts. The project will also collect citizen science information from a number of stakeholders, including fishers, ecotourism dive companies, tourist hotel divers, vessel captains, fish traders and aquaria.

What I do

The project collects information about threatened shark and ray species, targeting mostly manta and devil rays, scalloped hammerheads and rhino rays (shark-like rays). A combination of approaches, including semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews and focused group discussions, are used to obtain from fishers local ecological knowledge about sharks and rays. In addition, a network of citizen science stakeholders is being formed to obtain information useful for monitoring the occurrence and abundance of threatened shark and ray species.