What happened to Malawi fish?

The winds were cold that August morning on the shores of Mlangeni in Mangochi. Too cold to part with the blanket and too cold to even dare feel the rhythm of the splashing waters on the shores.

Yet, they were not cold enough to stop Yusuf Jussab, 47, from waking up at 4 am to peddle his canoe into the distant far of the lake to fish.

“My life revolves around fishing. It is my everything,” says Jussab, a small-scale fisher.

As he jumps out of the canoe, sorting out fish entangled in the nets, there is a group of about 20 fish buyers, most of them women who, with empty buckets, have also defied the cold to buy fish from fishers like Jussab.

He has been fishing here for some time.

“I started fishing when I was 12. At 17, I dropped out of school and bought my own fishing kit—a net, canoe and peddle, among others,” he says as other fishers dock on the shores.

He married at 21 after he had built a three-bedroomed house, electrified and roofed with corrugated iron. Yet, this was not all he wanted.

“I worked hard for two years, saving some money with the hope of going to South Africa to buy furniture and a car. That was in the year 2000,” he says.

Today, Jussab owns a modern car he bought two years ago after selling his old one. He is not an average Malawian belonging to the statistics of living below a dollar a day. He is not rich, but not poor either.

“It is all because of fishing. This is gold for most of us here in Mangochi,” he says.

And it is not just so for people in Mangochi.

Fishing from Lake Malawi, according to Dr Steve Donda, deputy director of Fisheries Department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, supports nearly 1.6 million people in lakeshore communities.

“Fishing makes substantial contributions to their livelihoods, by supporting approximately nine percent, 18 percent, 15 percent, nine percent and 30 percent of the people in Karonga, Nkhata Bay, Nkhotakota, Salima and Mangochi, respectively,” he says.

In fact, 2013 data from the Department of Fisheries shows that in terms of employment, fishing from Lake Malawi directly employs nearly 60 000 fishers and indirectly over 500 000 people who are involved in fish processing, fish marketing, boat building and engine repair.

This is why Donda is not wrong to advance that fishery is a valuable source of livelihood and maintains economic equilibrium within the country.

But over the years, the catch of fish in the lake, according to Jussab, has not been impressive.

Interestingly, on that cold Tuesday morning, Jussab docked ashore with a quarter-full canoe of fish. The catch, judging from the chaotic scenes of panic from buyers with large buckets tussling to get their share, was not even close to satisfy them. Some did not even dare to join the fray, clearly waiting for the dock of other fishers.

“We do not have enough fish these days to buy. We struggle to get it. Most fishers always come from the lake with little fish,” says Esme Mtenje, one of the fish buyers at Mlangeni shores who sells it at Mangochiboma.

And she adds: “The erratic fish catch is also affecting the pricing on the market. In our quest to balance the buying cost with selling costs, we end up charging more, eventually, losing customers. Fish easily rots. As a result, we do not have an option apart from selling them at a lower price,” she says.

Even Jussab agrees of the dwindling pattern of fish.

“Fishing is no longer the same. Until around 2003, I could dock ashore with my net full of fish and my canoe almost three-quarters full. It does not happen like that these days, and the trend is worrying,” says Jussab, adding that there are more fishers today than they were when he was 17.

The dwindling trend, which is a grave economic and social worry for 1.6 million people who derive a livelihood from the lake, has also been consistently highlighted by international researchers.

At a recent week-long media training in fishing in Kenya, Marcel Kroese from the European Union Smartfish programme said Malawi has over the two decades lost 93 percent of its fish production.

“Between 1990 and 2010, Malawi had over 30 tons of fish and now the country has less than two tonnes. A million and a half people are operating on less than two percent of what they used to have. It is not possible to catch all the fish as the situation is now,” he told The Nation.

In 2011, Raphael Mwenenguwe, research officer for the Research Into Use Office, told the media that the amount of fish supply from the lake has declined from about 30 000 metric tonnes a year 15 to 20 years ago, to 2 000 tonnes a year.

However, despite insights from local fishers and data from researchers on the dwindling fish stocks, the Department of Fisheries argues the drop in fish stock is marginal, adding that the severity of the problem has been grossly exaggerated.

So, what is the truth about the dwindling fish stocks?