Africa's great lakes and their fisheries potential

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exported--mainly to the United States, Japan, and Europe. The export of fur and skins of Australian animals has been prohibited under Australian customs law since 1923; however, the law provides that the Minister for Customs and Excise may waive this prohibition in certain cases. It had been the practice to do this, but the Minister for Customs in the new Australian Government announced, in January 1973, that, as from 1 April 1973, the export of all kangaroo products would be prohibited. This prohibition on the export of kangaroo skins would only be varied for scientific or educational requirements. The export of other kangaroo products and kangaroo skin products would only be permitted when the Minister was satisfied that this would not affect the conservation and preservation of the various species. This does not prevent the States from continuing their harvest programmes of kangaroos. It is claimed that the local market is too small to utilize the number of skins and, without an export market, it will not be economic to continue the present culling methods, so that property owners may resort to poisoning to control kangaroo numbers. Dr Moss Cass, the Australian Minister for the Environment and Conservation, recently called a meeting of Australian and State Government Ministers responsible for wildlife, in an attempt to solve the controversy over the export ban on kangaroo products and skins, and to fulfil his responsibility of ensuring the conservation of Australia's native wildlife. The Ministers agreed that the meeting: (1) was opposed to uncontrolled harvesting of kangaroos and related species (Macropodidae); (2) recognized that, for conservation purposes, selective culling or harvesting of certain species of Macropodidae may be a legitimate management practice; and (3) agreed that a scientifically-acceptable range of data-gathering and control measures be drawn up to regulate culling or harvesting throughout Australia in the interests of conservation of the species and the general environment. The Ministers appointed a working party under the chairmanship of Dr D. F. McMichael to report on techniques of data-gathering, management, and conservation of kangaroos and related species throughout Australia. Until such time as the Australian Government is convinced that a thorough and comprehensive

national programme for the protection and management of kangaroo populations exists, the Minister for Customs and Excise will not consider lifting the ban on the export of kangaroo skins and products.

Reference

FRITH, H. J. & CALABY,J. H. (1969). Kangaroos. F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne. R. W. BODEN, Department of Environment and Conservation, P.O. Box 1937, Canberra City, ACT 2601, Australia

AFRICA'S GREAT LAKES AND THEIR FISHERIES POTENTIAL The fishes of the Great Lakes of Africa have long been a source of protein food to the people who live on the lake shores. Now, however, with the vast increases in population in Africa, and with improvements in communications, their importance as providers of food to the people has become far greater than ever before. Recent papers by Dr Geoffrey Fryer (1972a) and (1972b) suggest that all is not well with the fishery management and conservation of lhese Great Lakes. In particular, he criticizes the trawl-fishing developments. We feel that his arguments do not take into account a great deal of the more recent work that has been done on fisheries research and resource management in Africa. Dr Fryer's most recent reference is dated 1963, and reports on experimental work carried out even earlier. We, who have worked for both the colonial administrations and the newly-independent governments of Africa, do not feel that standards of fisheries management and research have fallen, as he suggests. We have been connected with fisheries research and management on the Great Lakes of Africa for many years, and between us have directed trawling work on Lakes Victoria and Malawi for the last ten years--during which much has been learnt which we feel justifies our view that Dr Fryer's conclusions are not now valid. Other workers in Africa have told us that they feel as we do. Some of the work to which we refer is summarized by Jackson (1971) and Bergstrand & Cordone (1971) for Lake Victoria, and by Tarbit (1972) for Lake Malawi.

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Governments which previously financed fisheries research institutions in colonial Africa did so through a lengthy chain of delegated authority, with the results that the paymasters had little control over the actual subjects studied, and that research on a number of interesting subjects, such as dragon-flies and schistosomes, was pursued but little was done to improve sustainable yields of fish from the Great Lakes. Many population studies on Tilapia were made, but the value of these has been lessened by the discovery that Tilapia may have learned to avoid the main sampling method then employed, namely gill netting (Jackson, 1971). Also, research away from the immediate vicinity of research stations has now shown that Tilapia stocks are, in fact, far healthier than the colonial research teams thought. Lowe's (1952) estimates of potential Tilapia production from Lake Malawi have been exceeded over many years, and the present yields seem to be sustainable (Williamson, 1966; Malawi Government, 1972). It has also been realized more recently that the previous emphasis on Tilapia stocks was not entirely warranted, as it has become accepted that less palatable but more prolific species can, in many cases, be used to provide far greater sustainable yields of protein. In the independent countries of Africa, senior fisheries administrators today generally have direct access to the political government, and they prepare Cabinet Papers for the direct information of policymakers. This means that fisheries delegates to international meetings, such as the meeting of the Committee on Inland Fisheries of Africa (CIFA), held in Chad in November 1972, are in a position to commit their Governments, as they are in close touch with (and are able to influence) the policy-makers at home. Agreements reached at such meetings, therefore, stand a very good chance of being ratified and implemented. By contrast, in 1956 a dispute arose over the fishery in the southern portion of Lake Albert where the then Uganda Protectorate and the then Belgian Congo were in conflict over fishing rights. Although local agreement was easy to secure, the need to refer the matter to the European countries concerned meant that no solution to the problem was ever found! On the other hand, recent trawling developments on Lake Victoria have resulted in international agreement, between the three bordering states, on the joint operation of a major UNDP/FAO Project which has carried out research and development, and in its Phase II will start commercial investment in a joint trawling industry that will be based on the known resources. The list of papers delivered at the Symposium on the Evaluation of Fisheries Resources in the Develop-

ment and Management of Inland Fisheries (FAO, 1972), held in Chad late in 1972 as part of the CIFA meeting already referred to, surely demonstrates that international cooperation in the fields of fisheries and water conservation is now well established, and we do not see how the African countries can fairly be asked to show 'greater willingness' in this. We cannot agree with Dr Fryer's suggestion that trawling in the Great Lakes is ecologically indefensible. It is not that 'preliminary tests have shown worthwhile catches', but that carefully-based experiments, extending over ten years in the case of Lake Malawi and nearly as long in Lake Victoria, have shown that sustained catches of previously-unexploited stocks can be made. The careful records which have been kept, when examined by classical methods of stock assessment, suggest that the stocks can sustain considerably higher levels of exploitation indefinitely (Bazigos, 1972). It has proved perfectly simple to protect breeding grounds and other ecologicallysensitive areas by legislation. This is because the trawlcaught fish occur in shoals in areas where TiIapia are not common. The size and cost of even a small trawler makes it easy for governments to enforce legislation to prohibit trawling in these areas. Bergstrand & Cordone (1971) and Tarbit (1972) show how trawling on Lakes Victoria and Malawi need not damage Tilapia stocks. Trawling at 10 metres or more in Lake Victoria results in a catch of Tilapia of only 1.14 per cent of the total catch (Bergstrand & Cordone, 1971). Results are similar in Lake Malawi. Larger landings of low-cost fish have also eased the pressure on Tilapia stocks by providing an alternative to them, and the available scientific opinion, based on contemporary research, holds that the trawl fisheries are not harmful to the Tilapia stocks in Lakes Malawi and Victoria. Dr Fryer's suggestion that the labour-intensive use of gill-nets is preferable to the capital-intensive use of trawlers, ignores the facts that gill-nets are ineffective for the capture of many species of fish, and that developing countries need to improve their economic position vis-a-vis the developed countries. Normally, a capital-intensive, mechanized industry is eventually more effective and efficient than a labour-intensive traditional industry. In this case, the advantage is not only economic, but biological: the introduction of trawling takes fish stocks that were hitherto clearly under-fished; it broadens the scope of species caught and relieves pressure of demand on the Tilapia. In any event, all trawling developments of which we are aware are designed to supplement, not replace, the existing giU-net fisheries. Newly-independent governments in Africa have

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devoted larger amounts of their own resources to fisheries research and development than colonial governments were able to do in many cases, and have generally secured far larger amounts of internalional assistance. To take one instance, current annual spending on fisheries work in Malawi, shown in the Malawi Government estimates for 1973-74, provided by local, bilateral, and multilateral, resources, is £485,140. The equivalent expenditure in the last year before independence (1963) is difficult to identify, as the Department was combined with Game and Tsetse Control, but the printed estimates show that salaries for all Fisheries staff were £11,400, and that total spending was of the order of £29,000. Even inflation does not bridge that gap! Malawi, with the assistance of various aid bodies, now deploys ten Professional Officers on fisheries research; prior to independence there were three Fisheries Research Officers (Malawi Government, 1964). On Lake Victoria, fisheries research was, before 1962, carried out by the East African Fresh Water Fisheries Research organization at Jinja, Uganda. Typically there were a Director and up to three fishery research workers at post. Following independence in Uganda, the physical facilities of the organization (building, equipment, etc.) were doubled in size, and research workers were increased to ten in number, due to the implementation of the UNDP(SF)/FAO Lake Victoria Project. The UNDP/FAO assistance also provided the 56-foot (17-m) fishing vessel 'Ibis', which is the first fisheries research vessel ever used on Lake Victoria that is able to make lengthy cruises in the off-shore waters. 'Ibis' amassed l,117 hours of fishing research time and dragged the trawl over 6,209 kilometres on the bottom during her first two years on the Lake (Bergstrand & Cordone, 1971). Hydrographic stations were worked every six hours during fishing. We do not think that anything like this amount of work has ever been done before on the main body of Lake Victoria (Kitaka, 1972a, 1972b). One of us is a member of the group of 'indigenous personnel' now working on fisheries in Africa. It may not be realized how many indigenous fisheries workers are now busy here. One of the great advantages of the modern international and multi-lateral type of assistance that is being given to developing countries, is that the donor institutions insist on the provision of local counterpart workers to work with the international experts. This was never the case in preindependence days, when very little thought was given to the training of local personnel. The list of papers delivered at the Symposium in Chad, referred to above, gives some idea of the work these people have done.

We would be the last to suggest that nothing can be improved with regard to fishery management and conservation, in its widest sense, on the African Great Lakes. We do believe, however, that governments and their advisers are aware of the problems, and are taking meaningful steps to deal with them. Dr Fryer's criticisms, we feel, are unlikely to help African workers to continue to advise and influence the authorities who are doing their best to use their resources wisely. It would have been enlightening if Dr Fryer had collected examples of the successes of fishery management in the last ten years. For instance there is Lake Kioga, where fish production has increased from I 1,000 tons a year in 1963 to 49,000 tons a year in 1969. This increase is very largely due to stockings of exotic species and a management policy designed to exploit them (Stoneman & Rogers (1970)). Also there is Lake Wamala, previously totally non-productive, which now sustains a fishery producing up to 6,000 tons of Tilapia per year through the introduction of nonendemic species and the appropriate management measures (Uganda Government, 1972). In Malawit earnings from fish exports, which provide an indication of the success of the management of the newlymechanized fishing industry, increased from £9,705 in 1964 (Malawi Government, 1969) to £138,830 in 1971 (Malawi Government, 1972). The increased exports were largely attributable to trawl-caught fish. Finally, the African nations can only accept the need for conservation of their natural resources if their problems of human nutrition and social development are given the attention which they deserve. As Regier & Kelley (1972) say: 'A growing fish production could help to tide us over the limited number of generations required to bring human population growth to a stop, and to bring the production of such levels of domestic and industrial wastes as cannot be prevented from escaping into a steady-state condition within the assimilative powers of a reasonably healthy environment.'

References BAZIGOS,G. (1972). Report to the Promotion of Integrated Fishery Development Project F A O / M L W 16. Malawi Fisheries Department, Zomba: 23 pp. (mimeographed). BERGSTRAND,EVA & CORDONE,ALMONJ. (1971). Exploratory bottom trawling in Lake Victoria. Aft. J. Trop. Hydrobiol. Fish., l, pp. 13-23, illustr. FAO (1972). Provisional List of Documents, Symposium on the Evaluation of Fisheries Resources in the Development and Management ofinland Fisheries, Fort Lamy,

Chad, November 1972. CIFA/72.|NF.I FAO, Rome: 4 pp. (mimeographed).

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FRYER, G. (1972a). Conservation of the Great Lakes of East Africa: a lesson and a warning. Biological Conservation, 4(4), pp. 256-62, illustr.

THE AFRICAN GREAT LAKES: FOOD SOURCE AND

FRYER, G. (1972b). Some hazards facing African lakes. Biological Conservation, 4(4), pp. 301-2.

To comment on Dr Geoffrey Fryer's papers (1972a, 1972b), with that of Stoneman et al. (1973), essentially requires emphasizing the two vital modern problems that Mankind must solve on the magnificent African lakes. They must at once be skilfully managed to yield protein for ever-increasing populations and conserved in their wonderful biological complexity as a heritage for all Mankind. These two essential needs are, with the use of modern fishery science techniques, not incompatible if both are understood and assigned equal importance. Practical suggestions to achieve these twin aims are urgently needed. Stoneman et al. effectively rebut many of Dr Fryer's statements and allegations, and indeed it is scarcely useful to suggest that lake fishery resources are being mismanaged, without unassailable evidence, or to call years of carefully-planned surveys 'preliminary tests'. Dr Fryer's thinking in general appears to lake little note of African aspirations and problems. African countries, like all the rest, must march with the times, and it is not reasonable to expect hungry populations, rife with protein deficiency diseases such as kwashiorkor, to exist around lakes containing enormous reserves of protein foods that are unobtainable by their present technology. One could as well say that the trawling of the beautiful Plaice offshore in the North Sea is 'indefensible', as it upsets their ecology and prevents numbers of fishermen from making a living by spearing them from coracles in estuaries. The trawl is a tool used by Man the world over to augment his expanding population's food supplies, and Africans alone cannot be denied its use. The answer is, of course, not to 'place embargoes', but to use them wisely, and with all the controls and management practices inherent in modern fishing planning, bearing on the specific problems of any fishery. This, as Stoneman and his colleagues show, is being done on the African Great Lakes. Massive pollution would certainly be calamitous, but no one must be misled into believing that such a disaster is probable. There is no evidence of future eutrophication. The countries around the lakes are poor for good reasons: considerable geological faulting has taken place there. Any valuable stratum is rapidly faulted away, so the lake regions have few mineral resources. There is no coal, oil, iron-ore, or similar factors responsible for such cities as Detroit, and for the concentrations of industries and population that are causing pollution of some of the Laurentian lakes such as Erie. These countries do not casually receive large aid programmes; if they had had the resources,

JACKSON, P. B. N. (1971). The African Great Lakes fisheries, past, present and future. Afr. J. Trop. Hydrobiol. Fish., 1, pp. 35-49.

KITAKA, G. (1972a). Past Trends and Recent Research of the Fisheries of Lake Victoria in Relation to Possible Future Developments. CIFA/72/S.13, FAO, Rome: 4 pp. (mimeographed).

KITAKA, G. (1972b). Some important features of the hydrology of Lake Victoria. Paper delivered at the 1972 annual congress of the Limnological Society of Southern Africa. LSSA Newsletter No. 19, Durban, p. 10. LOWE, ROSEMARYH. (1952). Report on the Tilapia and other fish and fisheries of Lake Nyassa. Col. Off. Fish. Publ., HMSO, London, 1, No. 2, pp. 1-126, illustr. MALAWIGOVERNMENT(1964). Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for the Year 1963. Fisheries Research (Part H). Government Printer, Zomba: 15 pp. MALAWI GOVERNMENT (1969). Economic Report 1969. Government Printer, Zomba, pp. 36-7. MALAWI GOVERNMENT (1972). Annual Report of the Fisheries Department for 1971. Zomba, Malawi: 33 pp. REGIER, H. A. c~¢KELLEY,D. W. (1972). Fish and Fisheries in the Context of Environmental Concern. First Session of the Committee on Inland Fisheries for Africa. CIFA/72/S.4, FAO, Rome: 8 pp. (mimeographed). STONEMAN, J. & ROGERS, J. F. (1970). Increase in fish production achieved by stocking exotic species (L. Kioga, Uganda). Occasional Paper No. 3, Uganda Fisheries Dept, Entebbe, pp. 16-9.

TARBIT,J. (1972). Lake Malawi Trawling Survey 1969-71. Fisheries Bulletin No. 2, Fisheries Department, Zomba, Malawi, pp. 1-16, illustr. UGANDAGOVERNMENT(1972). Fisheries Department Annual Report 1970. Entebbe: 24 pp. (mimeographed).

WILLIAMSON,R. I . (1966). Analysis of Ring-net Catch Data from the South-East Arm of Lake Malawi, 1946-1966. Malawi Fisheries Department, 4 pp. (mimeographed). J. STONEMAN, Chief Fisheries Officer, Malawi K. B. MEEC.AM, Project Manager, UNDP/FAO Lake Malawi Project, & A. J. MATHOTHO, Project Co-Manager, UNDP/FAO, Lake Malawi Project, Fisheries Department, Ministry of Agriculture & Natural Resources, P.O. Box 593, Lilongwe, Malawi

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