Fish Culture in Gabon

JUngle fish pond with cement drainage structure

  BARRAGE POND

Jungle pond with cement drainage structure (monk) in foreground. This also controlled the water level of the pond thus preventing water from spilling over the dikes and eroding them and fish loss. The green plankton bloom on the water surface was a good source of food for the fish. The man on the dike in the distance was my best farmer, Felicien.  He was a hard worker and built many ponds. Peace Corps used his ponds later as a training site for new fish volunteers. We would write each other until he died in April 1994 of an illness, probably of malaria. See this pond drained.

E.N.C.R. school pond in Oyem
Fish pond at the school in Oyem built by my students.  Clay dikes are constructed in a  valley with a small stream. One dike holds your water supply back and the one below holds the water in the pond. The overflow canal allowed the water to be stagnant for a plankton bloom and prevented overflow into the pond. You want to clear the trees away from the pond to allow more sunlight for better fish production. One could have many ponds in a row down the valley but you had to do a lot of digging by hand with a shovel and if the villager was lucky they had a wheel barrow. Not easy work if you are ill with malaria or intestinal parasites.
  
HARVESTING
harvesting the hard way


The woman to the left is emptying a  pond by hand with a bowl to harvest  fish that will collect in a smaller pool of water. She will pass a handmade net through the pool.  Usually it would require many women many hours to empty the pond. It was a site to behold as several women rhythmically worked but certainly not the most efficient way to harvest a pond.  My job as a fisheries advisor was to help villagers build ponds correctly so that they could be emptied completely and harvested yearly; this was part of good pond management. Otherwise, there would be an overpopulation of fish and stunted growth.  One way to empty a pond  was with a cement structure called a monk (moine in French).  It was quite an accomplishment for me and my farmers to build a monk because of logistics and cost. Without the monk, dikes would be broken open to drain the pond down and  rebuilt.  






This is the top of a monk. The slots on top take about 6 inch  by 12 inch sections
of wood. Between the wood is packed clay and at the very top is a filter to allow water flow and prevents the fish from escaping. This filter was made by punching holes through a piece of sheet metal.  When water flows over the top section of wood it falls to the bottom of the monk and out a drain pipe at the bottom that passes through the dike.  If you want to drain the pond remove a section at a time as the level slowly drops. The writing on the right side of the monk is the year "1980" and my initials "MB".
 top of monk
rebar
How To Make A Monk

Pour a cement foundation at the lowest end of the pond which will also be the deepest part of the pond if you want it to drain completely.  Arrange your rebar (the metal rods) in the shape of the monk form. When the base is dry, assemble your wooden cement form (to the right). This cement form was built to be reused many times.  The wood is about 3/4 of an inch thick and it was a bear to haul in the jungle. This form was assembled without nails and held together by the 3 squares on the outside which had spikes holding them together that slide into holes at the corners. At the base of the monk, where the drain pipe will connect, a section of banana trunk the diameter of the pipe would be placed to maintain an opening. When the cement was dry it was quite easy to punch out the banana section.
 form

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