The fish we ate last year may have been the best we'd yet found to anchor our holiday dinners: Lake Victoria Perch. The flesh was rich and firm with a meaty fullness. Had you accidentally followed a mouthful of it with a mouthful of turkey breast, the contrast would not have been jarring. We had at last found our traditional holiday fish, we believed.
Yet when we scanned the fish counter at Whole Foods last weekend, none was to be found. Other fish markets had none either. It seemed our tradition would die in infancy, though perhaps the real misfortune was that it had ever been born.
Looking into the matter, Kristine and I discovered that "Lake Victoria Perch" isn't just the name of a fish, but a synechdochic summary of a far-flung environmental and social tragedy. "Lake Victoria Perch" is an introduced species, not native to Lake Victoria. Alien species have brought environmental upheaval and impoverishment to innumerable locations. If they took any pleasure in their acts of destruction, they would positively envy the cataclysm the Lake Victoria Perch (also, and better, known as the Nile Perch) has unleashed in East Africa, with help from some influential two-legged friends.
Nile perch were introduced into Lake Victoria in the 1960s to boost the catch of locals who fished for subsistence and for buyers in nearby markets. For a while, all looked well. The annual catch rate zoomed upward, and the Lake Victoria fishery was becoming a major enterprise. But, as David Auerbach writes,
The tipping point came in the 1980s, when global capital stuck its oar in. Processing factories were built around the lake (more than 35 of them), processing the perch (as well as the only other two fish caught in any numbers in the lake, tilapia and a small sardine processed into fishmeal) for export to the First World. And, of course, the money flow changed; the European, Asian and Israeli factory owners began to control the fish economy in the three countries, and the bulk of the catch was exported. As both riches and nutrition flowed out, the nutritional welfare of the region suffered...[i]nstead of being a good local source of protein, fish has become too expensive for the locals to buy.
Still, the LVP is a bonanza to some enterprising folks.
New subsidiary businesses are thriving. European pilots fly fresh fillets daily to Europe, Israel and the United States. While fishing employment has decreased due to mechanization, men are brought in to work in the factories. Prostitution (and STDs, including AIDS), crime and weapons smuggling have also become a vital part of the new economy. Those planes that fly out full of fillet often come back with crates of weapons to supply the continent's wars.
It's not surprising that Whole Foods, which makes an effort to ensure that its goods aren't produced by harmful or exploitive methods of growing/rearing/catching, would discontinue selling the LVP. Whether they did this for ethical reasons or not, I don't know--at last report, the LVP population apparently was in decline due to overfishing and worsening water pollution. Whatever the reason, its good to see this stuff is going away. I could understand, though, if people living along Lake Victoria, who have become dependent on the industry surrounding the LVP, didn't agree. Should the industry collapse, more dislocation and suffering will result. The economic and social aftershocks of this fishery will be felt across Africa for years.
The fish itself bears no blame for this, of course. Still, it's hard to think of other species that form the nexus of such an extensive web of misfortune. Judged against the LVP case, our complaints about invasive species pushing aside favorite wildflowers or game species seem effete and trivial.
Tags: Fish; Environment; Lake Victoria Perch
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