Mwanza, Tanzania

From 1980 to 1985 I worked as a biologist on several species of fishes belonging to the cichlid family (perchlike fishes which are popular with many aquarists). Most of the cichlid species were endemic to Lake Victoria. Their present day status is not known, most of the species are thought to be extinct due to the introduction of the Nile Perch (Lates nilotica). Our base was a Tanzanian fisheries research station located in Nyegezi about 11 km south of Mwanza, a medium sized town of about 60.000 inhabitants at that time, on the Mwanza Gulf of Lake Victoria. This lake is after Lake Superior the largest freshwater lake in the world. It was not far from Mwanza, near Kayenzi that John Hanning Speke was the first European in 1858 to see Lake Victoria and decided this had to be the source of the Nile. In essence he proved to be wrong. The Austrian discoverer O. Baumann demonstrated from 1892-1893 that the Kagera river flowing from Ruanda into Lake Victoria should be considered as the source of the Nile.
	Left and right: two of the many new species our research team discovered in the Mwanza Gulf
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