REPORT OF LAKE WAMALA FISHERIES FRAME SURVEY 2012

Abstract

Lake Wamala is one of the significant small lakes in Uganda after the five large lakes Victoria, Albert, Kyoga, Edward and George. The lake is located in central Uganda northwest of Lake Victoria and generally surrounded by numerous swamps and marginal vegetation and mashes. The lake lies between latitudes 0o 15'; and 0o 25' N 31o 45' to longitude 32o 00' E, longitude and at an altitude of 1000m above sea level. It varies in size both seasonally and over a long-term drought cycle, with a periodicity of up to 30 years. Lake levels were very low in early 1990’s but with El Nino rains of 1997, there has been significant improvement in the size of the lake and overall fish catches. It is indicated that the surface varies from 100 to 180 sq. km depending on the season. There are 6 rivers feeding this lake i.e Rivers Bimbya, Mpamujugu, Nyonzi, Kobusuma, Kibimba and Nabokazi. (Kaddumukasa et al. 2006). Following heavy rains in 1961 the open water of the lake expanded from about 100 km2 to 118 .km2 while the fringing swamps and islands covered about 60 km2. It maximum depth was 4.3 metres (Okaranon 1995). In the 1980’s this lake prevously was found in Mubende district and had 11 landing sites i.e Gombe, Katiko, Bukongo, Buteba, Karyonkoko, Kamuli, Luboja, Buzibazi, Lusalira, Mamba and Lunoni. An aerial count in October 1965 gave 450 canoes on the lake and up to 53 canoes were recorded in Katioko landing site alone (Okaronon 1993).Today the situation has changed the number of landings have increased due to population expansion around the lake.The communities around the lake purely depend on the system for their livelihood and poverty reduction in particular fishing besides livestock and crop production. Unlike other major water bodies of Uganda where period assessment of fishing factors is carried out to guide management, fishing effort and infrastructure on Lake Wamala have not been evaluated or reported for close to two decades. It was reported that one of the management problems of most African lake fisheries is that they are open access with no control of fishing effort (FIRRI, 2002). Poor management on any lake is partly attributed to lack of or inaccessibility of information on the types and size structure of fish available for harvesting, guidelines on the quantities of fish that can be harvested without depleting the stocks, suitable fishing effort and fishing gears and methods for exploiting the fisheries. Although Lake Wamala is an important system that supplies fisheries resources and significantly contributes to the economies of the riparian districts, a regular assessment of its fisheries has elluded management. Against the above background, the intervention provided by the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project II, under the applied Research provided an invaluable opportunity to assess and report on the status of one of the satellite lakes of the eco- region.