Environment
Kariba on brink of ca
c
. . . as lake’s kapenta population sw
The Parade Correspondent
A
t the beginning of January 2013, the selling price
of dried kapenta or Lake Tanganyika sardines
(Limnothrissamiodon) hit an all-time high of US$7,00
per kilogram in Kariba, up from around US$4,50 late
2012 – and that has heralded bad times for the livelihoods of
local fish industry and fisherman like Edmore Chivungu.
For years, scientists have been blaming fishermen for
depleted kapenta stocks in Lake Kariba, but now evidence points
to another culprit - climate change.
Recent reports have found that changing water temperatures
are responsible for shifting fish populations. As waters warm,
kapenta are swimming to colder river sites. But record high
temperatures in the region are bringing other species into the
river system, and as the popular fish population dwindles,
fisherman like Chivungu are seeing the fishing business fading.
Chivungu has been fishing kapenta literally since he was a
‘baby’, watching his father from a crib on the canoe or playing in
the shade while the elder Chivungu trawled for a catch.
At the tender age of eight, (Edmore) Chivungu started hauling
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fish nets and traps, and when he left high school at age 18, he
bought his grandfather’s larger canoe.
Lake Kariba is one of the largest man-made water bodies in
the world. The lake is situated on the Zambezi River and shared
by Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The fishery of the lake is based mainly on Limnothrissamiodon,
a small fish species which was introduced there in 1967 and
1968 by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization
(FAO) on behalf of the Zambian government.
The species is the lake’s most heavily harvested fish species
and the most widely consumed, particularly among low-income
groups in the two countries.
Be that as it may, fears abound that kapenta availability in
Lake Kariba appears to be under threat from a host of interrelated problem issues, say those along the Zambezi river ecosysytem.
Catches are already a worry for most formal fee-paying
fishing operations which are battling to break even in their
business operations. Several reasons have been put forward as
possible causes of the low harvesting volumes for kapenta, in
particular, and other fish species, in general.
April 2013