Rachuonyo North, Rariaeda and Kisumu West sub-counties named top users of illegal undersized fishing gillnets on the Kenyan portion of Lake Victoria.
Others top offenders are Nyando, Kisumu Central, Kisumu East and Rangwe.
Undersized gillnets with a mesh size below five inches are outlawed in Kenya due to the damage to fish stocks, especially smaller immature ones.
Five sub counties Rachuonyo North, Rariaeda, Kisumu West, Seme, and Mbita have the highest number of illegal undersized fishing gillnets on the Kenyan portion of Lake Victoria, a survey showed — an indication of lapses in surveillance and law enforcement.
Undersized gillnets with a mesh size below five inches are outlawed in Kenya due to the damage to fish stocks, especially smaller immature ones.
A joint survey by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries and the State Department for Fisheries and Blue Economy said that out the 76,731 illegal gillnets, most were found in Rachuonyo North (22.6 per cent), Rarieda (13 per cent), Kisumu West (12.6 per cent), Seme (12.2 per cent) and Mbita (8.9 per cent).
The five sub counties contributed more than 69 per cent of the illegal nets as compared to about 31 per cent from the other 11 sub-counties including Bunyala (7.4 per cent), Homa Bay (0.2 per cent), Bondo (0.8 per cent), Nyakach (3.2 per cent), Nyatike (3.5 per cent), Suba (0.8 per cent) and Samia (1.8 per cent).
Others are Nyando (4.8 per cent), Kisumu Central (8.3 per cent), Kisumu East (0.2 per cent) and Rangwe (0.1 per cent).
Away from the illegal under-size nets, the overall number of gillnets used by fishers on the Kenyan portion of Lake Victoria increased by two per cent from 188,984 in 2014 to 192,987 in 2016. Mbita sub county, with 53,017, had the highest number of gillnets accounting for 27.5 per cent of the total, the survey said, while Rachuonyo North (27,914) contributed 14.5 per cent, Rarieda (17,239) contributed 8.9 per cent, Nyatike (14,594) 7.6 per cent, Kisumu West (13,712) and Suba (10,771) had a share of 7.1 and 5.6 per cent respectively. Suba (10,771) contributed 5.6 per cent.
“These six sub counties contributed 71 per cent of all the gillnets enumerated while the remaining sub counties contributed the remaining 29 per cent,” the survey said.
The general distribution of the nets by mesh size showed a dominance of six-inch gillnets in Bondo, Mbita, Suba and Nyatike while less than 2.5-inch gillnets dominated Bunyala, Kisumu West, Seme and Rachuonyo.
Out of all the 116,256 legal gill nets enumerated in 2016, Mbita (46,167) contributed 39.7 per cent, Nyatike (11,914) constituted for 10.2 per cent, Rachuonyo (10,584) 9.1 per cent, followed by Bondo (10,352) and Suba (10,331) both constituting 8.9 per cent each.
The five sub counties contributed 77 per cent of the legal gillnets as compared to 23 per cent from the remaining 12 sub-counties.
The total number of gillnets increased from 650,652 in 2000 to 961,273 in 2016.
Gillnets below five inches are illegal while the minimum allowed mesh size in Kenya and Uganda is five inches and six inches in Tanzania.
In terms of type of fish targeted, more than half of the fishers (115,515) or 51.80 per cent sought after the Nile Perch in 2016.
This proportion is similar across East African countries whereby Kenya had 53.68 per cent (23,433), Tanzania 50.92 per cent (55,800) and Uganda 52.02 per cent (36,282) fishers.
These proportions are also similar to those recorded in the previous survey: lakewide 54.2 per cent; Kenya 54 per cent; Tanzania 55 per cent; and Uganda 53.1 per cent.
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Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
