From George Maponga in Masvingo

Fish stocks in Tugwi-Mukosi Dam, in Masvingo, have depleted severely due to over-fishing.

This comes amid reports that more commercial fishing cooperatives were licensed than the dam can sustain.

Poachers have also been a menace at the dam.

The anti-poaching team has only one boat, while at least three speed boats are required to keep an eye on poachers along the dam’s shoreline.

Tugwi-Mukosi is Zimbabwe’s largest inland dam with a capacity of 1,8 billion cubic metres of water.

The Government has so far licensed 17 fishing cooperatives, with hundreds of applications waiting to be processed.

However, according to experts, the dam can only accommodate 10 cooperatives.

Both cooperatives and poachers from communities adjacent the dam have been complaining of smaller “catches’’ in the vast dam saying the situation was getting worse by day.

They look back with nostalgia to the glorious old days when they used to realise bountiful hauls enough to feed their families and sell to other people.

“The situation is now very bad because it is now difficult to come out with a meaningful catch in Tugwi-Mukosi unlike in the first days when we would make a killing from the huge quantities of fish that we would have caught.

“We now suspect that fish stocks have greatly gone down because of over-fishing,” said a fish monger from Maringire who preferred to remain anonymous.

Others lamented the decline in fish realised from the dam, saying this was threatening their ability to send children to school and finance other mundane tasks.

Zimparks spokesperson Mr Tinashe Farawo recently said it would require scientific research to establish whether indeed fish stocks had depleted in Tugwi-Mukosi.

Mr Farawo, however, conceded that more cooperatives had been licensed above the dam’s carrying capacity.

“We cannot make a conclusion at the moment before carrying out a scientific investigation, but what we can say right now is that prospects of over-fishing might be there because the dam has a carrying capacity of 10 fishing cooperatives but at the moment there are 17 cooperatives that were licensed.”

The Zimparks spokesperson said no more fishing permits would be issued until the situation at Tugwi-Mukosi improves.

“We will make sure that no new permits are issued so that we create space for breeding so that fish stocks replenish in Tugwi-Mukosi.

“It is standard practice that there should be space to allow breeding of fish,” he said.

Mr Farawo said his organisation had also licensed fishing companies to breed fish with one of them being Lake Harvest which was into kapenta production.

“Breeding of kapenta at Tugwi-Mukosi is currently underway and harvesting of the first kapenta will take place once the situation is ripe.”

Tugwi-Mukosi was stocked with over 200 000 fingerlings by Government more than two years ago as the provincial launching pad for the Command Fisheries programme that was expected to be replicated to other water bodies across Masvingo, which has the highest dam density in Zimbabwe.

A vibrant fisheries industry is envisaged at Tugwi-Mukosi with potential to become a big business that will give nutritional boost to surrounding communities, while also creating jobs and earning them disposable income through fish sales.