Preface

Imagine that you attended the Great Lakes of the World (GLOW) II meeting in Sligo, Ireland, in July 2000, and that the president of the Aquatic Environment Management & Health Society (AEHMS) invited you to volunteer to assist in the preparations for the next GLOW Conference. The idea was to take the next GLOW Conference back to Africa—to East Africa this time—and to concentrate on the African Great Lakes which are shared by Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, DR Congo, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. It was obvious that such a meeting should be held in Tanzania as it borders three African Great Lakes, and that it should primarily focus on Lake Victoria. The two major projects on the lake would probably guarantee funding for participants from the lake region. This assumption proved correct and the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Programme (World Bank and Global Environment Facility) and the Lake Victoria Fisheries Research Project (European Development Fund) co-financed the GLOW III gathering.Apart from its immediate beneficial effect on all participants, the power of a conference is in the time lag required for the production of some form of output. GLOW III took place in February 2002 and a special issue of the journal (Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management) focusing on the world's Great Lakes, containing nine peer-reviewed papers, was published in 2003. Not bad at all, one might say, but wasn't the main topic of the conference Lake Victoria? It was indeed. The number of papers on Lake Victoria was overwhelming; good and bad, ripe and green. In the meantime GLOW IV had been convened, again in Tanzania, which resulted in the submission of additional papers on Lake Victoria. The AEHMS concluded that the time was opportune to combine all these papers in a special issue on Lake Victoria fisheries and its management. Such a publication was timely and was a unique topic among other published books on the African Great Lakes such as Coulter (1991), Witte and Van Densen (1992), Munawar and Hecky (2001), and Awange and Ong'ang'a (2006).At this point it is essential to inform the readers of the difficulties involved in retrieving some historical research papers which had remained unpublished, and resulted in long delays. Some of the Lake Victoria experts may recall that the African Fisheries Scientists Association (AFSA) held a conference in 1994. The conference was over and there were no funds for the publication of its proceedings. By the time the box full of manuscripts was rediscovered, new research had been completed, theses had been finalised, and results had been published elsewhere. Then, LVFO decided to organise the conference Lake Victoria 2000, A New Beginning. Options for the future, in May 2000. Numerous presentations were given, but again no proper action was taken in advance to secure funding for the publication except for the conclusions of the conference, which received limited circulation. LVFRP then stepped in to assist in the publication and contracted two scientists who had just retired to review and edit the papers to prepare them for publication. LVFRP had a budget to publish these papers. When the feedback from the authors for revisions was received, the project needed an extension of nine months. During the negotiations, LVFO management decided to seek alternate funding from the UN University/INWEH. This unfortunately failed and the papers fell into neglect once again.The president of AEHMS learned about these papers when he was asked what it would cost to publish the papers in the Ecovision book series or in the AEHMS Journal. In light of the relevance and importance of the Lake Victoria papers, it was decided by the GLOW organizers and AEHMS to publish the papers on the AEHMS website after the usual editing process. The idea of posting papers on the web was not new. The majority of the papers in the present volume had already been placed on the AEHMS website about one year after GLOW III. This was done to demonstrate to the scientists of Lake Victoria that the AEHMS is a professional society, determined to assist scientists world-wide in the publication of their results in a peer-reviewed, primary journal (now ISI rated). However funds were not sufficient for the editorial work. Consequently the papers remained unpublished.Finally, AEHMS resurrected the mission to publish them as a compendium in this special issue on Lake Victoria, which came about thanks to the efforts and dedication of the AEHMS. An editorial committee was established which finally selected an interesting collection of papers, reflecting the changing dynamics of Lake Victoria fisheries and their management. It was soon apparent that the large number of papers from GLOW III and IV would increase the size of the special issue.The spectacular ecological changes which have occurred in Lake Victoria as a result of increasing eutrophication and the introduction of alien fish species, have held our attention since the 1970s. In the three countries bordering this lake, research programmes were set up to answer questions as to how the lake's fragile resources and ecosystem should best be managed. The Governments of the three riparian countries were successful in establishing a flourishing tripartite management unit, the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO). In addition, external assistance was provided by a number of bilateral and multilateral agencies. Of the latter, special mention should be made of HEST (Haplochromis Ecology Survey Team of the Leiden University, the Netherlands), with over 30 years commitment to research in Tanzania. This has resulted amongst other things, in the preparation of a much used standard handbook for fisheries research on the lake (Witte & Van Densen, 1992), the EU funded Lake Victoria Fisheries Research Project and the World Bank supported Lake Victoria Environmental Management Programme.The papers published in this issue reflect the successful co-operation between African and international scientists from the Netherlands and Canada. They show how the effects of the greatly intensified fishing on the lake, following the emergence of the introduced Nile perch and the Nile tilapia, add to the complexity of the environmental jig-saw puzzle. Additionally, they provide advice for the management of the fisheries resources.The eleven papers in this issue are consequently arranged in two sections: Fisheries dynamics and Implications for fisheries management. The first section contains six papers, which respectively describe the dynamics of the freshwater prawn Caridina nilotica as a food source and its abundance in the pelagic fishery; the shift in the diet of Brycinus sadleri (Wanink et al.); the changes in spatial and temporal distribution of the endemic pelagic Rastrineobola argentea (Tumwebaze et al.), as well as the survival of the latter (Manyala et al.); and the decline and recovery of species within the Haplochromis species flock (Witte et al.).The last section contains five papers which provide advice for the management of the fisheries of Lake Victoria. The papers by Njiru et al. and Ojuok et al. respectively, deal with the role of the introduced Nile tilapia. Is it replacing the locally overfished Nile perch? What effects does the intensified fishery for tilapia have on its life history? Mkumbo et al. focus on the sustainable exploitation of the Nile perch and the second paper by Mkumbo et al. reports on a study of the significant impact of the formerly neglected baited hook fishery. Finally, Geheb et al. sketch a framework for the participation of fishing communities in the management of the fisheries.Important questions need to be asked about the type and nature of consumers of this special publication. Who would want a compendium of fisheries papers on Lake Victoria? We believe that the Lake Victoria special issue will be consulted regularly by many fisheries scientists, managers and policy makers regarding the state of the fish stocks which continue to be an important topic of discussion. This issue not only provides an insight into the ecology of the small aquarium fishes that disappeared, but also discusses the complex management of the Nile perch fishery. The Nile tilapia fishery cannot be neglected and the upsurge in Caridina, the small freshwater prawn, is highlighted in detail.The research manual for Lake Victoria by Witte and Van Densen (1992) taught theories and techniques to many, particularly young scientists in the 1990s. This same generation is now responsible for top research on Lake Victoria. Many African colleagues read the manual from cover to cover frequently. May they treat this special issue of Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management (AEHM) in the same way, for the sake of the lake and the millions that depend on it for their livelihoods.We take this opportunity to sincerely thank all contributors for their interest, hard work and revision of their manuscripts which led to this eagerly awaited publication on Lake Victoria fisheries. Similarly we are grateful to the AEHMS for resurrecting the project, its continued support including generous financial assistance, and for the peer review, revisions, and technical/linguistic editing which enhanced the quality of the publication. We would like to thank Iftekhar F. Munawar and Ahmad Munawar for their technical/linguistic editing and editorial assistance. Thanks are also due to Lisa Elder, Susan Blunt and Jennifer Lorimer for their extensive editorial assistance and copy editing.

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