Title: Estimation of the total catch and effort of the industrial fishery in Sierra Leone, 2008-2019.

One of the challenges in the management of the industrial fishery in Sierra Leone is the lack of a complete historical record. This study integrated data from different sources in order to reconstruct monthly catch and effort statistics from 2008 to 2019. This was achieved by comparing the total catch by the industrial fishery by species category with vessel licencing statistics. The monthly catch and effort statistic were calculated including missing data from vessels in the license statistics. The estimated missing catches added approximately 20 percent to the total catches reported in the logbooks. Expert knowledge and published literatures were key in the result analysis. Reporting system and data management has improved in the most recent year (2019), there is though a good agreement with between the reported vessels in the license and logbook database. The overall decline in effort since 2016 in the number of vessels to about 50 percent. The result from the monthly estimated catch statistic present a large discrepancy from Sea Around Us project reconstructed catches for Sierra Leone.