Celnike Shegani is responsible for the Stacioni i Linit hatchery. Her main task is to oversee the restocking of Lake Ohrid with koran (Salmo letnica), an endemic species not found elsewhere in the world.
Along the eastern edge of Albania, where it borders Macedonia and Greece, are three lakes; Lake Ohrid, and the greater and lesser Prespa Lakes. Lake Ohrid, the largest of the three, is shared by Albania and Macedonia, with about a third of the approximately 350 sq. km surface area on the Albanian side of the border.
One of the characteristics of the Lake Ohrid is that it is home to a species of trout, Salmo letnica that is not found anywhere else in the world. Locally the fish is called the koran and like other members of the trout family it is a popular table fish. It has a silvery body with marked black spots and sometimes red spots along the lateral line as well. As a unique species the government is keen to ensure that it does not become extinct due to overfishing or environmental depredation and thus supports a programme to restock the Ohrid with koran fingerlings each year. This maintains the stock while allowing a small scale fishery that removes some 15 tonnes of koran each year from the lake.
Albania, Macedonia both contribute to restocking efforts
The institution responsible for the restocking of koran is the government hatchery in Pogradec, Stacioni i Linit, overseen by Ms Celnike Shegani. It is an indigenous species that is also the symbol of the city, she says, and is special because it is only found in the Lake Ohrid. Both Albania and Macedonia, which share the lake, are interested in maintaining and improving the stock of the fish and are collaborating on the stock management efforts. On the Albanian side these efforts are not just based on the importance of maintaining biodiversity, but fulfil a legal obligation, Albania’s fisheries law, which calls for the sustainable management of the stock. Each year therefore the hatchery releases several thousand fingerlings into the lake. The restocking activities go some way towards mitigating the pressure on the koran stock both from the legitimate commercial fishery by registered fishers as well as from the small rural communities that live around the lake and maintain a subsistence fishery that targets koran among other species.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development, and Water Resources which supports the hatchery’s efforts expects around a million fingerlings to be released each year. This is not always possible says Ms Shegani for a variety of reasons. But this figure is over and above the natural reproduction of the koran. While the restocking efforts are going ahead Ms Shegani feels that they alone are not enough. We need to improve our management of the fishery, to work with the registered fishermen to prevent fishing by unregistered fishers and illegal activities including the use of prohibited fishing gear or nets with mesh sizes that are under the legal minimum. Altogether, Ms Shegani says, there are about 140 fishing licenses issued for the lake. Each license covers a vessel with two people so the number of legitimate fishers is in fact 280. These fishers target some of the 17 species that are present in the lake, of which 10 are endemic including the koran and a species of carp. Of the 17 species, the most commercially valuable is the koran. Total annual catches amount to some 15 tonnes of fish a year, however this refers naturally only to the official catches; the volumes of illegal catches are by definition difficult to estimate. The licences entitles the fishers to fish in certain parts of the lake, but without limits on the amount of fish that can be caught.
Broodstock stripped in the wild
The restocking efforts start at the end of the year when from 1 December to 1 March the fishery is closed as this is the time of the natural reproduction of the fish, not only the koran but also other species. This ban on fishing activity is enforced by government fish inspectors who patrol the lake in the different districts to ensure that nobody is defying the prohibition. The only exception is a small group of 14 experienced fishers who are allowed to fish for a particular reason: to capture, without damaging, the koran broodstock and to bring the fish to the edge of the lake, where technicians from the hatchery receive the fish. The male and female fish are then stripped of their milt and eggs respectively, which are then mixed together to fertilise the eggs. The fertilised eggs are collected and within an hour they are brought to the hatchery, rinsed, and placed in trays. This catching activity is carried out at different points around the lake in areas where the fish are known to come and breed. This year, says Ms Shegani, we collected about 1m fertilised eggs, which finally led to 700,000 fingerlings, a rate which is quite normal as mortalities vary from 25 to 35%. Last year we released 550,000 fingerlings, but we also caught fewer eggs. In general the hatchery catches about 1m eggs though this figure can vary depending on the natural conditions in the lake.
Ms Shegani is well aware of the delicacy of her charges and knows that a single mistake can wipe out an entire batch. She therefore goes to great lengths to ensure that they thrive in the hatchery even sometimes spending time talking to them as they swim in their basins. The eggs hatch after about 45 days and the larvae can survive for a further two weeks on the nourishment provided by the yolk sac. Thereafter, however, they need dry feeds with a high protein content, which the hatchery has been getting from international feed manufacturers. This year for example the provider was a Dutch company that had a feed that was particularly suited to the larvae. In previous years the hatchery has tried feeds from Israel as well as Turkey, but the protein content was lower and this was reflected in slower growth rates and weaker fingerlings. This year with the Dutch feed the fingerlings grew so rapidly and were in such good condition that the hatchery could release them into the lake earlier than usual.
Restocking efforts contribute to keeping catches stable
The hatchery does not however have any insight into the status of the koran stocks in the lake and thus only has an indirect idea of the usefulness of the r
estocking programme. We know that fishers are catching smaller volumes of other fish, while catches of koran have remained more or less stable, says Ms Shegani. This can at least partly be attributed to the restocking activities of her hatchery. But Koran stocks also benefit from Macedonian efforts to restock the lake, which, according to Ms Shegani, take the form of releases of large numbers of larvae, as opposed to fingerlings, into the lake. In any event the stability of catches is good for the fishers as the koran is the most commercially valuable fish in the lake retailing for EUR10/kg compared, for example, with EUR3/kg for farmed trout.
| Hatchery Stacioni i Linit | |
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Pogradec Supervisor: Celnike Shegani | Activity: Restocking of koran (Salmo letnica) in Lake Ohrid Facilities: Larval basins, adaptation basins, laboratory Volumes: Release of approximately 700,000 fingerlings per year in October |
The hatchery has also tried to develop a closed cycle for breeding the fingerlings by retaining some of them in the hatchery in an attempt to grow them into broodstock. Although this trial went on for four years it was finally abandoned as the broodstock contracted diseases transmitted by birds and it was decided to continue instead with the traditional method of breeding. Disease is otherwise not an issue at the hatchery as it draws its water from an underground spring located a short distance away and there are no other users of the water. Once it goes through the hatchery the water is cleaned and filtered before being released to prevent the flow of nutrients into the lake. Private attempts to farm koran have also foundered partly due to a lack of knowledge, but also due to the incidence of disease. Farmers also found that the fish took too long to grow to market size for it to be commercially viable to farm it. So today the koran still has its unique status as a fish endemic to the Lake Ohrid that is not found or farmed elsewhere.
