Decline Of Cichlids

Improved Essays
Lake Victoria (LV) is the largest tropical lake and has experience a series of changes in dynamics. In the 1970s most of the fisheries were artisanal and was mostly Cichlids, and then LV was converted to a multimillion dollar commercial fishery and was about 90% of the fishing exports in volume and value when the Nile Perch was introduced to LV. This interest the fisheries because the different governments that have jurisdiction of LV incented the move to a more commercial fishing by licensing the fish processing, fishmeal firms, boat registration, fines, trading licensees and exports for economic revenues to each State (Matsuishi 2006).
In the 1980s the Nile Perch was introduced to LV and cause a decrease of native species of Haplochromine
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However, phytoplankton is little to nothing in the diet of Prawns. The decline of Cichlids after the Nile Perch introduction was due to predation from the Nile Perch which consequently move on to adult Prawns. Though, before the Nile Perch appear in the food web as apex predator, most haplochromine predate on juvenile prawns and this feed on juvenile Nile Perch (Goldschmidt et al. 1993). The predation of Cichlids by Nile Perch is only partially blame in its decline. Overfishing of haplochromine contributed to its decline (Witte et al. 1992). However, the fishing of Cichlids was only done at the local level. This aid the Nile Perch to become the apex predator in the entire food web (Witte et al. 1992, Matsuishi …show more content…
2002). The excess of nutrients has been directed linked with pollution produce and discharge by municipalities, industries and agricultural activities (Emmanuel et al. 2007).
The rapid population growth in the surrounding areas of LV has led to the massive scale of deforestation of wetlands and agricultural conversion (Vershuren et al. 2002, Emmanuel et al. 2007). Both factors mention before contribute with seasonally anoxia that have impacted the composition and dynamics of LV (Vershuren et al. 2002). Additionally, the seasonal rainfall increases the eutrophication in LV and the resuspension of bottom sediment also contributed to the excess in nutrients (Emmanuel et al. 2007).
The current status of LV is considered unsteady, due to the high fluctuations that the environment would constantly experience. The Status of the fisheries is declining due to the overexploitation and capture off immature fish. Also, the commercial fisheries taking over LV have intensifying the catch of Nile perch due to high demand of the fishery factors leaving the locals out of job and food (Njiru et al.

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