The Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic (LTFHC) is focused on the increasingly crucial balance of biodiversity and health in lake ecosystems. Accurate data on environmental change and stress, as well as local, community-level engagement, is critical to effective solutions. In regions like the Lake Tanganyika and Ruzizi River basins, there is a lack of credible quantitative fish biodiversity data such as distribution, abundance, and documented declines, which impacts community health, security, livelihoods, fisheries stock, and local conservation efforts.

With JRS support, LTFHC will conduct a fish biodiversity survey to complement an existing household survey tool. Sampling data will be accompanied by a social survey tool with a range of questions specifically assessing the health of the Lake Tanganyika fishery and in particular around species that are crucial to both ecosystems and livelihoods (i.e. Ndagala/Dagaa [Stolothrissa tanganicae] and Mukebuka [Luciolates stappersii]), as well as Cichlids, which are taken both for consumption and the commercial aquarium market.

Destruction of forest canopy contributes to disruptive temperature change in African inland lakes, altering range distribution of key biodiversity taxa. New zoonotic disease emergence is a risk, as well as observed increases in topsoil run-off into lakes and rivers. These effects, along with widespread shoreline bed net fishing, are having a negative effect on lake biodiversity and ecosystems. Detailed studies on key fish species diversity and related fishing-activities are still quite limited in the Lake Tanganyika Basin (LTB). However, local people living along the lake relying on its fisheries for daily survival have intimate knowledge of fish species diversity and ecology.

This work is needed now more than ever, as pandemic conditions led to a decrease in data monitoring activities. Rainy seasons are changing with increasing incidents of flooding, destroying infrastructure around waterways with dire effects to ecosystems, human health, and livelihoods. Anecdotally, fish species diversity is changing and local fisheries are stressed. This in turn causes food and income insecurity to the hundreds of thousands of artisanal fishers, and may drive adoption of slash and burn agriculture as an alternative, as well as increased vulnerability to armed group recruitment.

Surveys will be conducted to systematically assess local attitudes, fleet status, and fisheries’ activities. Household surveys will be used to better understand the nexus between fish biodiversity, malaria incidence, environmental degradation, the incidence of endemic diseases, and food insecurity. Data will be used to develop more effective fisheries and conservation strategies which operate in greater harmony with local community health and livelihood needs. The immediate goal of the project is the establishment of an open-access database with these crucial indicators, which will be an important tool for conservation and fisheries groups, as well as local authorities. Ideally, these data will become a foundation for future programming. Throughout the entirety of the pre-survey and survey period there will be multiple touch points with the community at regional and local levels, and interaction with chiefs and other local community leaders.

Dr. Amy G. Lehman is the founder of the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic (LTFHC)/Water Based Aid, Value, Engagement (WAVE). Dr. Lehman graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall and was chosen as their 2014 Alumni Award recipient. She received both an MD and MBA from the University of Chicago, and additionally trained in General Surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center and was a Senior Fellow with the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Dr. Lehman received the 2014 Distinguished Young Alumni Award from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She has been honored by Newsweek as one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World,” and by a number of other publications for her work in the Lake Tanganyika Basin.