Govt suspends fishing activities in Lake Tanganyika

RUKWA:THE government has suspended fishing activities in Lake Tanganyika to boost the population of fish.

The suspension will last three months from May 15, this year.

Deputy Minister for Fisheries and Livestock Mr Alexander Mnyeti made the announcement over the weekend at Kasanga Ward along the shoreline of Lake Tanganyika in Kalambo District, Rukwa Region.

Lake Tanganyika, dubbed the African Great Lake and the deepest lake in Africa, is the world’s longest freshwater lake.

Mr Mnyeti was on a working tour of Kigoma, Katavi and Rukwa regions to raise awareness of the importance of suspending fishing activities in Lake Tanganyika.

“The fundamental reason is that the fish stocks in the water body have been dwindling for decades,” he said.

In 2017, the Global Nature Fund declared Lake Tanganyika the year’s ‘most threatened’ lake.

According to the agency, a combination of overfishing, pollution and climate change was taking a toll on the fish population.

In the Burundian part of the lake, production fell by a quarter – from 20,000 to 15,000 tonnes between 1995 and 2011.

Mr Mnyeti said the suspension was a collective decision by Tanzania and its neighbours Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia.

On his part, Chief Fisheries Officer from the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Ambakisye Simtoe said that per survey conducted by Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute (TAFIRI) in 2022 Lake Tanganyika on part of Tanzania has 144,690 tonnes of population of ‘migebuka’ and sardines.

However, the population has declined by 8 per cent compared to 1995 which was 157,493 tonnes.

Lake Tanganyika is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the world and is also the second-largest by volume.

The water body is also the second-deepest, behind Lake Baikal in Siberia.