Organization: Kenya Marine & Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI)
Project Location: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda
Web address: http://www.kmfri.co.ke/
Title of Grant: “Desk Study of Lake Victoria Biodiversity”
Grant Amount: $13,800 over 6 months
Principal Investigator: W. O. Ojwang
Organization Background:
The Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) is a national corporation in the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries. It is mandated to conduct aquatic research covering all the Kenyan waters and the corresponding riparian areas including Kenya's 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone in the Indian Ocean. The Institute was established by an Act of Parliament (Science and Technology Act, Cap 250 of the Laws of Kenya) in 1979 and run by a Board of Management.KMFRI’s mission is to contribute to the management and sustainable exploitation of aquatic resources and thus alleviate poverty, enhance employment creation and food security through multidisciplinary and collaborative research in both marine and fresh-water aquatic systems.
Grant Description:
Lake Victoria is the largest fresh water lake in Africa and one of the largest in the world. The ecosystem of Lake Victoria and its region have been badly affected by human influence. In 1954, the Nile perch was introduced into the Lake to improve fishery yields. The species was present in small numbers until the early to mid 1980s, when it underwent a massive population expansion and came to dominate the fish community and ecology of the Lake. Also introduced was the Nile tilapia, now an important food fish for local consumption. The Nile perch proved ecologically and socio-economically devastating. Together with pollution resulting from deforestation and overpopulation, the Nile perch has brought about a transformation in the Lake resulting in the disappearance of hundreds of endemic species. Many of these are now presumed to be extinct.
There is a need to bring together the diverse sets of information that already do exist about the Lake ecosystem to be used for fisheries and conservation purposes. The JRS Board agreed to bring regional biologists along with well-qualified biodiversity informaticists to undertake a short study of the following questions: (1) What public and private databases already exist about Lake Victoria biodiversity, and what current projects are developing new databases? (2) Are these projects sharing data with each other, or are they developing stand-alone, proprietary databases?
The Problem:
The Lake Victoria fish community and associated biodiversity suffer from lack of a coordinated information infrastructure by which informed policy decisions can be made. There are few significant organized electronic databases that can be shared and manipulated for conservation.
There is thus poor understanding of the biology, distribution and behavior of freshwater and wetland species of conservation concern in the Lake. This problem is compounded by limited understanding of human induced processes that threaten the Lake and associated wetlands. There is lack of appreciation among the stakeholders, of the relationship between resource conservation and development. As a result, there is a lack of alternatives about the use of resources for conservation and for the harvesting of endangered species.
While much biodiversity information about the Lake region is available, there is a strong need for coordination and collaboration among regional institutions and communities in sharing existing biodiversity data. This requires centralized information sharing where data can be securely stored, regularly updated, and made available to the stakeholders.
The Solution:
To meet this challenge a primary step is to identify and integrate the existing diverse data and information from various scientific disciplines. The data is, in many cases, highly heterogeneous (in content and format) and spans large scales of space and time. The need for such an informatics solution cannot be more urgent as researchers continue to compile additional data and information about the Lake’s natural world.
An initial first step to address this issue is an investigation of the current readily available facts and figures relevant to the Lake and the collation and review of the information. Several specific areas have been identified for the information to be generated:
- Types of databases and whether public or private
- Kind of Lake Victoria biodiversity data generated and held by stakeholders
- Who holds or is responsible for sets of data on Lake Victoria biodiversity
- The users of data sets or databases
- Data sharing modalities
- New data acquisition and or database establishment initiatives
- Challenges of data acquisition and establishment of databases
Current on-going projects within the Lake basin (Assess whether they have any subtle aspects of biodiversity studies)
Global Impact:
It is hoped that out of this desk study a plan will evolve for a Lake Victoria biodiversity blueprint and that it might be a model for similar situations.
