Summer is coming again here on Lake Malawi and we are
excited for the warm weather and calm lake conditions it brings. Our winter season with Operation Wallacea was
amazing with great students and great research accomplished! Back at Kande we have some exciting plans for
the next few months that we need your help on!
Info on the first plan is below! (more to come)
Let’s Build Artificial Reefs a.k.a. “Virundu” in Lake
Malawi!
The people of Malawi get most of the little meat-protein
that they consume from the Lake’s amazing fish species. For centuries one of the ways that fishermen
here have worked with the Lake to provide them with more fish is by building
underwater “reef” structures, locally known as Virundu, which create more fish habitats
particularly for breeding. Traditionally
these Virundu were built by cutting down hardwood trees, once plentiful, and
sinking them. Such structures were
durable and provided an inviting lattice work of branches upon which algae
could grow and in which fish could make temporary homes. After the breeding season, the fishermen
would return and harvest a portion of the fish around the Virundu to feed their
families. Unfortunately, these days hardwood
trees are difficult to come by and fishermen are finding that inshore waters no
longer have the fish they used to. This forces
them to go deeper and deeper into the lake to catch the fish they need to feed
their families.
We first learned about Virundu by speaking with fishermen at
Masakhahunju fishing village where we do our Fisheries Monitoring Surveys and started
brainstorming with them how we might re-create them in the Lake in a way that
was as equally as durable as hardwood, could be made from locally available
materials, was scalable, and perhaps even more attractive to the lake’s fish. What we came up with last year were
structures inspired by the baskets that Malawians use to transport their fish
to market. After getting a local weaver
to make some of these structures from readily available bamboo we sunk 10 of them
near Kande Island as a trial and began waiting to see if fish might find them
attractive.
To our astonishment within two months fish had made our
Virundu their homes! Look at the video
below! (ignore the wrong timestamp) This was taken earlier this year.
BUT WE SHALL NOT BE
DETERED!
While very sad this is the nature of research. There is trial and there is error. But there is also progress and learning! So this new summer season we need YOUR HELP!
We KNOW that our reef structures WORK at attracting fish.
We KNOW that we can make them with LOCAL materials.
We also KNOW that we can SCALE them up to create potentially
VAST underwater fish habitats.
All that we need to do is make them STRONGER to last through
the annual winter windy season.
To do that we are going use IRON! The bamboo lattice work
baskets were an ideal material on which algae could go and an attractive
structure to the fish, they just weren’t strong enough to withstand the
currents. BUT if we reinforce our bamboo
virundu baskets with IRON rebar we believe that they stand a good chance of
making it through the Lake’s next winter windy season.
BUT IRON ISN’T FREE!
While easily available, iron rebar, unlike wild growing
bamboo, is not free. How much is it you
ask? Well we have calculated that the
rebar needed to reinforce one 2-meter-long by 1-meter-round virundu basket and
provide strong anchors to attach it to the lake floor will cost JUST $25 USD!
THIS IS WERE YOU COME
IN!
Click the link above to donate any amount you can to help
buy rebar to GIVE A FISH A HOME and we will send you a picture of the virundu
basket that your donation helped to build and send you regular updates on the
fish that have made it their home!
AS WE ALL KNOW THE
RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH! SO LETS ALL GIVE
A FISH A HOME!
