In 1987 ALCOM started project activities in Eastern Province of Zambia focusing on the development of pond aquaculture for rural communities. Although this project, in collaboration with the Department of Fisheries, realised an impressive increase in the number of fish ponds and fish farmers, it was unlikely that aquaculture would satisfy the demand for fresh fish in the Province.
The Province has few perennial streams where fishing is practised. Over the years water storage reservoirs have been constructed. There was no information about the status of the fisheries on these reservoirs. Fish harvests from the reservoirs could potentially have a significant impact on the supply of fish for the surrounding communities.
In December 1989 a start was made with the pilot project “Development of Small Reservoir Fisheries in Eastern Province of Zambia” with the objective to demonstrate productive small reservoir fishery management strategies which are within the capacity of national and local Government entities to plan and promote, and which are acceptable to and benefit the local communities.
Several activities were designed to reach this overall objective:
development and testing of a cost-effective method for collecting and analysing fishery and socio-economic information on small reservoirs;
development of fishery management strategies, using the above-mentioned information, which provide for sustainable exploitation of the fishery and directly benefit local people;
test and document each proposed management strategy on selected reservoirs in Eastern Province,
Fisheries development and management strategies aim at attaining an optimum rate of exploitation of the reservoir fishery. The potential and actual fish yield set the limit for strategies for development or management of the reservoir fishery. Data required to determine these fish yields were collected through fish stock sampling with multi-mesh gillnets,
Since any fisheries management would involve and affect primarily the fishers, it was necessary to consider their values, motivations and attitudes towards possible interventions. It was also important to determine the influence of these interventions on the distribution of the benefits between fishers and non-fishers and among fishers themselves. A socio-economic study was carried out to collect this information. The socio-economic study also collected indicative information on the present fishing pressure and yield around these dams. A catch monitoring survey was designed to determine more precisely the present yield of these reservoirs. This information combined with the information of the fish stock sampling would identify possibilities for management and interventions to increase the present yield.
The authors of this report organised and supervised the socio-economic study. They were not directly involved with the fish stock sampling and the catch monitoring survey. These were carried out and supervised by other ALCOM staff members. This report however, uses the unpublished data from those studies.
