Perception on fishery trends in Lake Victoria

Abstract

Lake Victoria in East Africa provides fishery resources to fishing communities and governments. The dynamics of these fish resources are variable, complex and poorly understood. The perspectives of different scientists, users and stakeholders are in disagreements on the state of Lake Victoria’s ecosystem and fisheries, thus creating a problem to constructive discussion regarding the fisheries future. In this study we looked at the social-ecological description of Lake Victoria’s system to find out the possible drivers influencing perceptions on changing fish catches and declining stocks. To understand the complexity of the fishery we focused on literature analysis and stakeholder analysis through networks based four themes perceived as drivers (Overfishing, Ecological changes, Environmental changes and Management issues) to find out the relationships among scientist and stakeholders. The findings from literature analysis indicate that authors have relationships to most other authors and perceptions in the network, no matter their preference of the perceived drivers. While the stakeholder analysis shows a large number of linkages among the different respondents, confirming the overall homogeneous nature of the responses with regard to the different themes perceived as possible drivers influencing fish catches in Lake Victoria.