The Food Of The Painted Woman

Kapenta (Limnothrissa miodon) fishing is an important commercial enterprise on Lake Kariba, giving a living to a significant number of people around the Lake.

It first came to the towns and cities of Zambia from Lake Tanganyika, although as early as 1860, the explorer Richard Burton had described the use of circular nets lowered from a canoe to catch fish attracted by the light of an mbaula (wood-fired brazier). Today, kapenta rigs have enormous lights on the surface and are fitted with the same circular nets, although they are much larger, and the lights are lowered into the water. The lights attract the fish and when there are sufficient numbers, the net is lifted to the surface with the catch. Kapenta fishing is an important economic activity on Lake Tanganyika (where is is known as dagaa) and on Lake Kariba, where it has superseded bream in terms of commercial viability.
The possibility of introducing kapenta into Lake Kariba was considered as early as 1956 although the first experimental attempts began in February 1962. Under the supervision of Dr George Coulter, Senior Fisheries Officer, in the then Northern Rhodesia, a brood of sardine fry of the genus Limnothrissa was netted near Mupulungu and placed into two galvanised iron transport tanks. They all died within five hours. It was decided that this was probably due to mechanical injury, so a method was used whereby the fry were caught in a large polythene net and placed in polythene bags. This resulted in a higher survival rate, although mortality was still high.
However, some individual fry had survived and were growing beyond the maximum transportation size. Thus a trial run to Kariba was attempted. On the morning of 25th February 1963, 350 fry were caught and transferred to polythene bags which were then stored in insulated metal containers. These were transported by road to Abercorn Airport (Mbala), by air to Kariba Airport and by road to the lake shore.

At Kariba, 7 1/2 hours after capture, 45 per cent of the fry had survived. Half of these were introduced immediately to a lake-side storage dam, where they all died within a few minutes, possibly because of a difference in the water temperatures. The next day only 14 of the original 350 were still alive. These were placed in a keep net in the lake, where they lived and grew for more than three months until a storm wrecked the net and the fry escaped into the lake. Albeit accidentally, the first introduction of sardines to Lake Kariba, had taken place.

But it was still not known whether they would find conditions suitable for breeding and also which of the two species involved would be the better. Investigations were carried out and by September 1966, it was decided that Limnothrissa miodon, the larger, less specialised species would be the one. Limnothrissa miodon was known to grown to 17 centimetres in Lake Tangayika and did not require such deep water for laying its eggs. Further experiments on the catching, handling, keeping and transportation of the sardines were also undertaken and a trial flight involving 12,000 sardine fry was made to Sinazongwe in December 1966. About 50 per cent of the fry survived.

Between July and November 1967, approximately 250,000 sardine fry were released into Lake Kariba from Lake Tanganyika. This involved 26 airlifts. In August and September 1968, a second series of flights took place and over 120,000 sardines were released.

In Lake Tanganyika the fry were first located in the shallows and then herded with hoop-nets into a funnel and then into plastic containers. When sufficient numbers had been caught they were transported to Mbala and then flown to the Fisheries Training Camp at Sinazongwe, where they were loaded into a twin-hulled boat and set free in the lake. Thereafter it was a matter of 'wait and see' but hopes of success were high.

At Sinazongwe, in late 1969, some fish, of varying sizes, were caught and these were identified as kapenta. This suggested that not only had they survived, but they had also bred in their new environment. The first attempts to catch the kapenta were made in October 1969 using banana boats, lights and scoop and lift nets. These catches were not spectacular, but large numbers of fish could be seen under the lights and by the end of that year, some had been caught 64 kilometres east of Sinazongwe.

Since the declaration of UDI in 1965, communications between the Zambian and Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) sides of Kariba had been virtually non-existent and Rhodesian biologists were unaware of the introduction of the kapenta into Kariba, but in June 1969, a strange fish was found inside the stomach of a tigerfish caught in the Sanyati Basin, 210 km west of Sinazongwe. On closer examination, it was found to be a kapenta. This was followed by numerous other instances where kapenta had become a tigerfish's meal. Although the numbers were by no means large, they were enough to say that the introduction had been a successful exercise and examinations of the stomachs of tigerfish showed that 70 percent of their food was now made up of kapenta. The Kariba kapenta are much smaller than the Tanganyika ones, reaching sexual maturity before a length of five centimetres and rarely growing beyond six centimeters.

Commercial fishing of kapenta started on the Rhodesian side in 1976 and on the Zambian side in 1980/81, after Zimbabwe's independence. At night, one can see the flickering lights across the dark waters of Lake Kariba. These are the fishing rigs at work. Catches are seasonal and during the summer months, the kapenta moves inshore, to protected bays, where they breed. Commercial catches rise again after March when the adults return to open waters. However, if the rain has been poor, there is less food for them, which means poor harvests for the fishermen (and for the fish and birds which feed on them)

But it is not only man, fish and birds which are out to get this Silver Gold. These hardy little fish are sucked into the turbines and spewed into the stilling pool below. Yet, they still survive and have made the 220 km journey through a river, devoid of plankton and infested with predators, to establish new shoals in Lake Cahora Bassa in Mozambique.

Because kapenta is so easy to prepare, an idle housewife can leave the beerhall just a few minutes before their husband comes home and still have a plate of tasty fish ready for his meal. Hence the name - the food of the painted women.

SOURCES:
A Wilderness Called Kariba by Dale Kenmuir
Tales Of Zambia by Dick Hobson
Zambia by Ian Murphy and Richard Vaughan