It also serves as a major source of revenue for the governments of the surrounding countries. By 2015, the lake was producing up to 1 million tonnes of fish per year, employing 200,000 people directly in fishing and supporting about 3 million people in total. Lake Victoria supports the largest freshwater fishery in the world. The importance of Lake Victoria in sustaining livelihoods With increasing urbanisation and rapid growth of poorly regulated cage fish aquaculture, in addition to climate change, these conditions could worsen unless proper measures are taken to protect the lake ecosystem and to regulate human activities. Initially, Nile perch earned good export revenues, but these have drastically reduced due to poor fisheries policies and regulations For instance, ngege, a native species of tilapia with a superior taste and texture to Nile tilapia, has disappeared from the lake. It also increased rates of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, brought about by a practice called Jaboya, in which fishermen favoured selling their catches to those female fish traders who offered sex as well as money.Ĭurrently, introduced tilapias, mainly the Nile tilapia, are taking over the populations of native tilapias in the lake. However, the supply could still not meet the demand, and this led to overfishing and illegal fishing. Nile perch also altered employment opportunities – as an artisanal native tilapia fishery was transformed into an export-oriented one. Nile perch were then introduced in the 1960s with the aim of boosting the fish populations and for sports fishing, However, predation from the perch reduced the number to less than 200 species and contributed to the extinction of about 60 percent of the cichlids. However, these native tilapia species collapsed during the first half of the 20th century due to factors including overfishing, algal blooms and pollution. Previously, the lake had more than 500 species – the majority of which were haplochromine cichlids. Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa, with a surface area of approximately 59,900 km², and is second only to Lake Malawi in terms of the number of fish species that it supports.
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