All this week, we’ve been hearing about the ecological devastation suffered by east Africa’s Lake Victoria. Although things look grim, there still may be cause for hope. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
Lake Victoria was once home to a diverse ecosystem of hundreds of species of fish. But overfishing and the introduction of the predatory Nile Perch have combined to kill off most of the lake’s native species. Still, as a result of recent findings, ichthyologist Melanie Stiassny is cautiously optimistic.
“It seems around Lake Victoria there are some refuges. There are small, what are called satellite lakes. And in some of those lakes recently we’ve discovered some of the species that we thought had gone completely extinct from Lake Victoria. We thought they weren’t anywhere else. But it turns out that some are hanging on in these satellite lakes. Obviously we want to preserve those satellite lakes and we don’t want the Perch to be able to come into them. Fishing on the Perch is now intense. Literally hundreds of thousands of tons of Perch are pulled out of Lake Victoria every day. And in some parts of the lake, the Perch is beginning to be overfished and its populations are beginning to dwindle.”
Dwindling Perch populations means there still may be a chance for native species to survive.
“It seems that in various areas in the lake there are habitats, particularly where there are rocky shores. It seems that some of the species of fish are able to hold on. So it may well be that we could create reserves around these rocky shores where no fishing on the local fishes is allowed. But in reality, we don’t know. When you perturb a system as large and as complex as Lake Victoria, we just don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. I’m Jim Metzner.