Panos Pictures
09 January, 2019
A fisherman who works illegally on Lake Victoria refloats the boat that he keeps hidden all day, before going fishing with a colleague, in Murchison Bay, Uganda.
Lake Victoria, nearly 60,000 square kilometers in area, harbours immense natural resources but is threatened by industrial, waste-water and agricultural pollution, over-harvesting of resources, land clearance around the banks, and decreased rainfall due to global heating. This impacts both biodiversity and the livelihoods of more than 30 million people in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Fishing alone economically supports more than 3 million people, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, yet 70% of fish endemic to the lake are threatened with extinction. Small-scale fishing is illegal because the equipment used catches immature fish before they can breed, but poorer fishers cannot afford the necessary nets nor the larger boats that can take them beyond the worst pollution around the shoreline.
Frédéric Noy
Born in 1965, Frédéric Noy is a freelance photographer based in Central Asia and represented by Panos Pictures. Formerly based in Tanzania, Nigeria, Sudan,...
