Lake Victoria losing Nile perch

There won’t be Nile Perch left in Lake in the next two years if serious measures aren’t taken to address illegal fishing, overfishing and pollution in the world’s second largest fresh water lake, Controller and Auditor General (CAG) warned in a report released on Thursday.

Faced by over-fishing, Eurozone crisis and the cheap production of farmed Bassa and Pegasus from Vietnam and China, Tanzania’s Nile Perch export industry has dwindled with last year’s export revenues plummeting to USD 50 million (EUR 38.2 million) from a whopping USD 200 million (EUR 152.6 million) in 2005.

Nile Perch, a predator fish introduced in Lake Victoria by the British in 1954, became the source of livelihood to about three million people in Tanzania’s Lake Victoria region by the end of 2005, when it was then nicknamed “Mkombozi” or savior in the national lingua franca, Kiswahili.

For the past few years, the storm against Nile Perch industry has been mounting thanks to the massive production of farmed Tilapia produced by Vietnamese and Chinese as well as the recent Eurozone crisis. European Union countries consume about 80 percent of Nile Perch from Lake Victoria with Spain, Portugal, Germany and Greece being the leading buyers of the perch fillets.

Click here to read the full story from the Guardian > 

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