Livelihood Diversification and Operational Techniques of the Artisanal Fisherfolks in the Coastal Region of Ondo State, Nigeria

This study was carried out to assess the livelihood diversification and operational techniques of the artisanal fisherfolks in the coastal region of Ondo state, Nigeria. Both secondary and primary data were used. A multistage sampling techniques was used to select 400 respondents from Ilaje and Ese-Odo LGAs, these LGAs were purposively selected because they fall within the core coast of the state which is about 180km. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the socioeconomic characteristics and operational techniques of the respondents. Cronoba alpha(α) was also employed to test the sufficiency of the survey instruments.
Analysis showed that 82% of the respondents were married, majority of the respondents (67%) were males while others (33%) were females. The operational techniques for fishing occupation reveals that 85% of the respondents make use of dugout canoe to carry out their fishing, 10% of the respondents make use of motorized canoe to carry out their fishing activities. The fish capturing techniques employed in the study area include active and passive methods. The married class is the most predominant group in the fishing business and this result is significant (p<0.01), fishing remains the most engaged main occupation with male predominant in the business than female. However, chi square χ² is 246.5 and highly significant (p<0.01) it implies that the level of livelihood diversification is significant in terms of gender. Returned Cronbach of 0.74 for items with means of 4617.3 and zero variance, implies a great deal of sufficiency. It is therefore recommended that the artisanal fisher folks should be encouraged to imbibe aquaculture practices in their community to augument their natural catch hence, increase diversification in livelihood.