For hundreds of years, West African fishermen have been fishing the Atlantic waters off their respective countries' coasts.  The region's fisheries, ports and beaches play a massive role in the area's economy, where thousands of people work in tourism, importing/exporting industries, and in fisheries.
Elasmobranchs are either caught intentionally or as bycatch in Ghana in and Cameroon. They are both a source of cheap meat for the rural coastal community, and a source of income for artisanal fishermen. Elasmobranchs fins are also sold into a profitable export market. The species' critical role in local economies has led to overfishing and a rapid decline in populations.

Issah Seidu, a PhD candidate at  Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology in Ghana, has been working in Greater Accra for years in an effort to establish a baseline of knowledge for the types of Sharks and Rays who inhabit the area. Mr. Seidu has found that more than 70 percent of the sharks and rays he has studied were “of global conservation concern and were listed as threatened, facing extreme risk of extinction in the wild.” This is in direct conflict with the fishermen’s lifestyles, as artesanal shark fisheries make about 80 percent of all fishermen’s income. The main conclusion of Mr. Seidu’s research is that fishermen have minimal options for their livelihoods other than to fish, “ but the opportunities available are narrowed and most of them are not favorable to them owing to their training and level of education.”

In 2015, AMMCO began allowing volunteer fishermen to report sightings or bycatch of the Blackchin guitarfish and other Elasmobranchs throughout Cameroon’s northern and Central Coasts. Out of the 12,655 observations, 97 percent (1476 of 1514) were reported to be elasmobranchs, with 11 species being classified as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered in small scale fisheries. Since then, AMCO decided to make the protection of this group their new priority.

AMCO is now conducting research along the southern coastline, which meets the Atlantic Ocean's Gulf of Guinea. “There is currently no catch data in the south, let alone effective fishery management,” says Ghofrane Labyedh, an AMCO Project Leader in Kribi, Cameroon. “Our goal is to fill that gap. In a region where upward mobility is scarce and the majority of rural coastal residents are low-income, how does a researcher convince a community to care about an animal that functions as a pivotal resource to their survival?

This project’s goal is to use photography to illuminate awareness of how West African researchers are conducting research to help save and protect sharks and rays. The protection of these species also supports artisanal fishermen, who sell their product for profit or dried and used as a source of protein. With the support of Save Our Seas foundation, I traveled to both Ghana and Cameroon to document the conduction of elasmobranch research in these areas, as well as how the  beach and oceans fit into the Western African lifestyle.