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Comprehensive research needed to reverse fishing trend in L.Victoria
2008-05-16 09:37:36
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
During his recent visit to the Lake region zone, President Jakaya Kikwete inaugurated a number of projects. They included a ferry boat, a fish processing factory, a seminary and a constructed road.
This is a good development trend in that it does not only show that the area has a number of economic potentials, but also is moving toward prosperity.
Besides launching the projects, the visit was also aimed at thanking the residents of Mwanza Region for the support they had given him and his party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, during the 2005 general elections.
Mwanza Region is one of the significant strongholds of CCM, which also gave the party and its candidate a significant support during the elections.
During the visit, the President became worried on noting that one thing was not going well-fish stocks in Lake Victoria have been dwindling.
Fresh water fish caught from the Lake and processed in the Lake-side city and towns of Mwanza, Musoma and Bukoba have a big market in Europe, but of recent it is reported that they face competition from Far East countries including Vietnam and China.
What stunned the President is that overfishing in the world`s second largest freshwater lake has been an increasing problem with records showing that the number of fishermen has gone up from 51,935 in 2002 to 98,015 last year.
As if that was not enough, the fishing vessels operating on the lake have also doubled in number from 15,434 to 29,730 during the same period under review.
``I really wish these findings were wrong but that is the reality,`` the President was quoted as saying.
The problem is not only overfishing, for scientific findings show that the fish caught are normally small in size compared to the situation in the past.
While in the past Nile perch caught weighed between 15 and 45kgs, the current catches are normally between 2 and 5kgs.
Describing the findings as disappointing, the President said Nile perch catches had gone down to 375,400 tonnes last year from 750,000 tonnes five years ago.
Besides overfishing, the other reasons contributing to the dwindling fish catches have been described as the use of illegal fishing gear, practices such as poisoning, outlawed nets and dynamites by unscrupulous fishermen.
Lake Victoria is shared among the three East African countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, with the largest part being in the latter.
It is well understood that Tanzania won the tender to supply Europe with fresh water fish from the lake because among the three, it managed to abide by the contractual supply conditions.
These included passing certain levels of cleanliness accepted by the buyers, availing reasonable supply amounts and supply them to the market at reasonable time.
To say the truth, though there have been problems associated with the production and marketing of fish from Lake Victoria, they have not been as vehement on part of Tanzania. This is because the concerned authorities have always taken immediate steps to correct the anomalies.
It appears that in the past seven to ten years there has been a lull on part of the government in taking measures to conserve the resources on the lake, while at the same time harvesting them sustainably.
It is well understood that there have been a number of research conducted by organizations such as Lake Victoria Management Authority, the Nile Basin Initiative and others on the ecological sustainability of lake and its resources, among them being on fish and fisheries.
With them there have been a number of findings, some of which point out not only the dwindling water levels of the lake, but also raise complaints on the environmental destruction of the lake`s surroundings.
Obviously, strategies for reversing the situation cannot be only about destroying the illegal fishing gear, what the Livestock and Fisheries Minister John Pombe Magufuli has been doing.
Much more profound measures that are also comprehensive in nature ought to be taken, not only for economic related activities on Lake Victoria, but also in other lakes.
But it is also necessary that large scale fishing activities capable of earning the country foreign exchange in other fresh water lakes like Rukwa, Eyasi, Natron and others should be established by planting fish species in them.
Also it is necessary to work out the actual annual fishing capacity of the lake and make sure that monitoring is done to ensure that the limits are not exceeded.
Resources that are commonly owned, more or less, need joint strategies in conserving, harvesting and sustaining their production.
It is therefore, necessary that besides the steps being taken by different organisations, measures that are being taken by individual governments in the processes should also be corroborated into action.
If more steps would also be taken alongside the conserving of the vicinity of the lake including the rivers that pour their waters into it, and other human activities are put into check including agriculture, livestock keeping and mining, definitely the worsening situation on the lake could be reversed.
But if things will be left to operate in the way there are at the moment, there is little about fishing and fisheries that is going to change.
mwonga19@yahoo.co.uk
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