Every weekday morning, our research interns
head down the lake shore to the local fishing village, leaving at 8.15 on the
dot so as to coincide with the fishermen coming back from a long night’s
fishing. Upon arrival in the village, locally referred to as Masakurunju, one
can encounter as many as 60 wooden canoes scattered along the sandy shoreline,
with the recently landed boats surrounded by groups of people, sorting through
the fine gauge fishing nets that were cast across the deeper waters of the lake
the night before. The catch invariably contains small open water fishes know as
utaka in the local Chitonga. Most of these fish belong to the genus
Copadichromis, a type of cichlid fish, and they make up a large proportion of
the diet of the villagers in this immediate coastal region of Malawi,
especially at this time of year. Also
potentially found in the catch are usipa – a sardine like fish, gongo – another
cichlid and nkholokolo (synodontis njassae) - a small species of catfish with a
mottled leopard style pattern.
At the Maru, we aim to collect baseline
data, every week, over long periods of time. For the last four years we have strove
to create a comprehensive data set for charts almost daily the fish caught at
Masakahunju, the fishing conditions and the fishing effort (in terms of working
boats). Data sets that track the same variables over such long time frames
hopefully provide useful context and history about the exploitation of local
fisheries in Lake Malawi that can be used by local people and government
officials to make better environmental management decisions.
Incidentally, one of the real pleasures of
walking to the fishing village everyday, is bumping into the beach venders;
well spoken salesmen, of whom many have adopted bizarre names hailing from all
sorts of random English words, phrases and celebrities. So far I have had the
pleasure of meeting Sweet Bananas, Gift, Brown Bread, Michael Jackson, Sugar
and Spice, Cheese on Toast, Spiderman, Donald Duck, Wiseman and my personal
fave, Mel Gibson. These men earn a living by selling whatever bits and bobs
they can to tourists, but it can also be helpful to have them around when the
fish are being sorted from the nets, as their translation and enthusiasm make
the whole process slightly less awkward.
For the fishermen themselves, it is a hard
life. It is currently the windy season here at Kande, and conditions have oft
been too choppy to go out in little one-man canoes. Sometimes the need for food
and money is such that personal safety gets put aside and there is no other
option but to brave the forces of the lake. But this is the harsh reality of
living off the land in the manner that these people do. It is a difficult
living, but for now it would seem there is ample food, enough to sustain the
population in this part of the lake. Recalling that old adage of ‘give a man a
fish and he can eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and he can eat for a
lifetime’; well perhaps if we can learn to fish sustainably in other fisheries
around the world, as it appears here, then people will be able to eat for more
than just one lifetime but for the lifetimes of generations to come.

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