It is said that Neith, the Egyptian goddess of warfare and motherhood, was present at the creation of the world, having swum through the primordial waters in the form of a fish.
That fish, known as the lates, became sacred to the Egyptian people, with specimens being mummified and the city of Latopolis, modern day Esna, named in its honour. Today, the lates is commonly known as a Nile perch and remains a vital source of food across many parts of Africa, although it is not welcomed everywhere.
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The Nile perch is a huge, heavily built member of the family Latidae, that grows to 2 metres in length and weighs as much as 200kg. They are silvery blue in colour with large mouths and dark, round eyes with a bright yellow outer-ring. The dorsal fin is divided into a spiked anterior section and spiked and spined posterior, which provide the fish with useful defence, particularly when they are young.
Although they are not as streamlined as some predatory fish, Nile perch are capable of bursts of explosive ambush speed, when the mouth is rapidly opened to expose a vast gape that creates a vacuum, effectively sucking in prey. The small, sharp teeth are designed to prevent escape rather than incapacitate, while pharyngeal teeth in the throat are used to crush and break down food before it is digested.
Young Nile perch rely on shoal behaviour for protection and will feed on zooplankton and invertebrates. As they grow, so their diet shifts, with adult fish having an almost exclusively piscivorous diet. Any fish, including their own species, is on the menu for adult Nile perch and they are voracious hunters, as their introduction to Lake Victoria has proved.
Covering almost 60,000km², Victoria is Africa’s largest lake by area and has long been a life-source for millions of people who live on the shoreline or within the catchment. Nile perch were first introduced in the 1950’s in the hope that they would thin the populations of haplochromine species, which had little commercial value, and become a source of food and revenue themselves.
The subsequent impact is cited as being one of the most devasting ecological catastrophes caused by an introduced, invasive species. Around 40% of those haplochromine species have become extinct, and without them algal blooms have depleted oxygen levels and rendered some areas unviable for life.
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There came socioeconomic impacts too, with fishers and fishing methods rendered redundant and unable to exploit the initial proliferation of Nile perch. Traditional nets were inadequate for such large fish and there came an acceleration of deforestation due to trees being cut down to smoke the fatty flesh of the perch. The issues even inspired a film, Darwin's Nightmare, released in 2004 and directed by Hubert Sauper.
In recent years, over-fishing has driven the Nile perch of Lake Victora to the brink. A cruel twist and evidence to the cost of meddling with an ecosystem, no matter how vast the habitat in which it has evolved.
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