Management of Lake Victoria fishery: Are we looking for easy solutions?

Abstract

Lake Victoria, East Africa, supports a fishery that yields about one million tonnes per annum consisting predominantly of three species, Nile Perch (Lates niloticus), Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) and a native sardine-like cyprinid called Dagaa (Rastrineobola argentea). The non-native Nile Perch is the most valuable of these species and supports an important commercial export industry; there are fears that overfishing, due to the growth of fishing capacity, is threatening the Nile Perch fishery. Based on its economic importance and the notion that overfishing is threatening the resource, the current fishery management system was developed to control fishing capacity and effort. This system, using the concepts of co-management, where fishing communities and stakeholders participate through community organizations called Beach Management Units (BMUs) to actively manage the fishery in partnership with the central government, has been criticized that it is “fishery-based,” focusing on a single species and taking no account of ecological conditions in the lake, nor other species. A more “holistic” approach, which places a greater emphasis on changing nutrient concentrations and primary productivity as drivers of fish populations, has been proposed. Though fishery biologists and managers on Lake Victoria recognize that ecological conditions affect fishery populations, there appears to be two major challenges hindering the implementation of such approaches: first, the lack of a coherent objective of the Lake Victoria fishery, and second, the challenges associated with incorporating and implementing concepts of nutrient information and multiple species into a practical fishery management program. This article describes the current fishery co-management program to determine the feasibility of implementing a holistic approach on Lake Victoria. It is concluded that whether a management system should be “holistic” or “fishery-based” is of little importance; what is needed on Lake Victoria are clear objectives and a management plan that will enable those objectives to be achieved, utilizing both ecological and fisheries data where appropriate.