Lake Tanganyika, bordering on Zambia, Tanzania, the
Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, is the world's longest
lake and second deepest. It is estimated to have formed between
two to twenty million years ago making it also one of the
world's most ancient lakes. Lake Tanganyika lies at the southern
end of the Western Great Rift Valley and is mostly surrounded by
mountains and under developed plains. Lake Tanganyika has only
one outlet, the Lukuga River which flows
from the east shore of the lake and winds its way 200 miles into
the Lualaba River in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A freshwater lake, Lake Tanganyika is
home to 2,000 plant and animal species including an estimated
500 species of fish including 250 cichlid fish species some of
which grow up to three foot in length. These fish are featured
in this video documentary. The lake is also home to the slender
snouted crocodile (Crocodylus cataphractus). The lake itself was unknown to the wider world until
'discovered' by British explorers John Speke and Richard
Burton in 1858 whilst they were searching for the source of the
Nile. Today some 100,000 are reliant on the lake for fishing,
whilst an estimated million people gain almost half of their
protein from the food trawled there reflecting the number of
people who live around the lake.
It is therefore of some concern that Lake Tanganyika is
warming, with some reports stating that the lake is at its
warmest for 1,500 years. This warming will inevitably affect
fish stocks and those reliant of the lake for their food,
however others claim that whilst the warming will inevitably do
harm, that harm is over shadowed by over fishing of the lake. This video documentary about Lake Tanganyika explores the
marine life of the lake as well as its environment, an
environment under some threat from pollution discharges into the
lake from fishing boats as well as pesticides.
