Overview of Ethiopian fisheries production system and its challenges in different fish potential area: A review

Abstract

Fish farming has been practiced in different parts of the world including Ethiopia. In Ethiopia fishery production mostly concentrated in Lake Tana and great Rift-Valley Lakes that targeted on Oreochromis niloticus, Clarias gariepinus, Cyprinus Carpio and Carassius Carasius. Still its production is under-exploited with limited access and production status in food marketing system. This paper focused on the review on the current fishery production system and major Challenge. The country has a number of beautiful water bodies with the total surface area of 13,637 km2 that have a potential to produce 94,541 tons annually. As literature show that having this potential the country produces only 45,610 tons in 2016 from both capture and Aquaculture fisheries. Fishery production system practiced with the combination of motorized gill net, traditional reed-rafts, chase and trap and processed in the form of gutting and filleting on the shore water bodies. Even the fishery sector highly contributes to sustaining livelihood of rural fishing community, it is mainly artisanal that characterized with low production and underutilization due to, high post-harvest losses, poor infrastructure and access to fishing materials, overfishing, agricultural expansion and wetland degradation, climate change and invasive weeds (Water hyacinth). Those problems need a critical and proper assessment or research in each specific area. Overall, the federal and regional government should be prioritized and taking a regular follow up and strength fishery research center in order to make them capable to resolve the problem through generating, adapting and transfer of appropriate fishing technologies that will ensure sustainable production, conservation, protection and management of the resource.