They could have resented the operation to confiscate their illegal fishing gears and the manner in which it was being carried out, but fisherman on Lake Albert say their fish catch has now improved due to this operation.
The fishermen say with the reduction on the number of illegal fishing gear, it’s only fish of the recommended size that they can now catch. According to Hoima district fisheries officer, James Mwesigwa, fishing nets of less than four inches are not recommended on Lake Albert.
Robert Ginyera, a fisherman and member of the Beach Management Unit at Mbegu landing site in Buseruka sub county, Hoima district, says fishermen can now get fish as big as twenty kilograms which was rare in the past.
Ginyera partly attributes this to the confiscation of the illegal nets.
Although the fisheries department has not yet come up with figures on the current fish stock in the lake, the fishermen say the stock seems to have increased as seen by the easy catch.
Geoffrey Opio, a fisherman at Kijangi landing site in Buseruka Sub County, says these days their nets spend less time in water and they are able to get a huge fish catch.
Opio says this is because most of the fishing gears that destroy the fishing grounds on top of indiscriminate fishing have been confiscated. He says fish is now multiplying undisturbed.
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Last year, fisheries ministry launched an operation to crack down on illegal fishing on Uganda’s waters. Teams of law enforcement officers from the Fisheries Directorate Entebbe were deployed on all major lakes to reinforce the usual district fisheries operations.
While launching the operation on Lake Albert last August, Fisheries Minister Ruth Nankabirwa said the operation had been prompted by the rapidly declining fish stocks on Uganda’s lakes which was blamed on illegal fishing nets.
