Alarm as Lake Victoria fish stocks declines by 35 percent
This photo taken on June 11, 2023 shows fishing boats in Lake Victoria in Mwanza region. PHOTO | Xinhua
What you need to know:
- The decline, has forced fish processing factories in the three riparian states—Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya—to operate below their installed capacities.
Arusha. Fresh worries are mounting about the declining fish stocks in Lake Victoria.
Experts from the East African region and beyond are calling for interventions to reverse the trend.
The interventions, they insist, have to include protection of shallow fish breeding areas on the shores of the shared lake.
The director of fisheries in the ministry of Livestock Development and Fisheries, Prof Mohammed Sheikh, said the situation was alarming.
“It is extremely important that mechanisms are put in place to restore the stocks,” he told fisheries experts who convened here.
He said fish stocks in the freshwater lake shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya have drastically declined by up to 35 percent.
Prof Sheikh attributed the worrying trend to illegal fishing, the destruction of critical fish habitats, and increasing human activities.
Philip Borel de Bitche, the chairman of the East African Industrial Fishing and Fish Producers Association, said the body was concerned by the decline.
According to him, the trend started way back in 2006/2007, when experts and regional bodies began consultative talks on the crisis.
“As the private sector, we got together and started monitoring the situation,” he told the meeting attended by the fisheries experts from around the region.
Mr de Bitche, who is also the MD of Kampala-based Greenfields Uganda Limited, said enforcement measures must be taken to conserve marine habitats and tame illegal fishing methods.
The decline, sources say, has forced fish processing factories in the three riparian states—Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya—to operate below their installed capacities.
This, experts say, has plunged the outlook of the fisheries industry across the region into a state of uncertainty and shrinking exports.
Mr Guda Tom, the regional chairman of the Lake Victoria Basin Network, challenged the fisheries bodies in the region to “work together to address the problem.”
Another fisheries expert, Dr Edward Rukunya, blamed the decline of fish stocks in Africa’s largest lake on illegal fishing.
According to him, Lake Victoria and its shorelines in all three riparian states were notorious for illegal fishing.
On the Tanzanian side, the hotspots for illegal fishing are mostly found around the Mwanza, Geita and Mara regions.
In Uganda, at least 12 zones have been identified as being notorious for prohibited fishing methods, as are some around Kisumu in Kenya.
Dr. Rukunya is the director of Fisheries Management with the Lake Victoria Fisheries Management Organisation (LVFO).
He warned that poorly managed transboundary resources, such as the fisheries, could become a potential source of conflict.
“For Lake Victoria, rapid urbanisation, industrialization, and the destruction of critical habitats are the major causes,” he pointed out.
LVFO, a Jinja-based institution of the East African Community (EAC), co-organized the meeting with Ecofish, a fisheries project being implemented in Africa, including the EAC.
Experts are worried that the drastic decline of catches from the lake may compromise the demand from the growing populations.
Some have attributed the decline to overfishing and the rising demand for the delicacy in both national and international markets.
It is estimated that 60 percent of fish production in the region is from the Lake Victoria basin and at one time, fish was the second most important export commodity from Uganda.
The fisheries sector in the EA region, including marine fisheries in Tanzania and Kenya, contributes an estimated four per cent of the regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
It employs over five million people with a total annual catch of 878,000 metric tonnes of fish, plus an estimated 70,000 metric tonnes derived from aquaculture.
