Yes, we are hunting crocodiles,” says a Lake Nasser fisherman who goes by the pseudonymYes, we are hunting crocodiles,” says a Lake Nasser fisherman who goes by the pseudonym Muhammad. “We cannot wait for the state to move … we have decided to catch crocodiles which have been feeding on the fish, the source of our living.”

Muhammad, who provides for his mother, a wife and three children, says catching fish is no longer enough to feed his family. He says there are over 30,000 crocodiles in Lake Nasser and that each day each crocodile consumes 20 kilograms of the finest fish in the world, adding up to or 60 tonnes a day.

He laments the waste of fish, which destroys his livelihood and forces the state to import fish – and calls on officials to tackle the problem of  crocodiles in the lake.

Flourishing crocodiles

The government has left the crocodiles to grow and flourish, thus depriving fishermen of fishing and pushing many of them to turn to crocodile hunting,” says fisherman Fawwaz in his seventies. “Fishermen consider crocodiles both their enemy and source of happiness because while the crocodiles have prevented them from fishing and while fishermen risk their life to hunt them, they generate a huge income.”

Crocodiles sell for L.E. 800-10,000, depending on the type, he says.

Fawwaz says his two sons, like hundreds of fishermen, have abandoned fishing and taken up crocodile hunting, undaunted by the risks and security issues. They switched professions because fishing is no longer viable.

Ahmad, Fawwaz’s son, says he is tired of fishing in the lake: Five years ago, Ahmad’s daily fishing trip used to take no more than one hour at the end of which he would come back loaded with no less than 50 kg of fish. Now, however, he has to make three or four trips a day only to come back with half of that quantity. Fish stuck in the nets, says Ahmad, are already cut in half because crocodiles eat half of the fish.

He accuses the government of neglecting fishermen and failing to provide them with health insurance. Their situation forces them to confront crocodiles to earn a basic living.

Dividing the lake

Ahmad Mahmud, head of Lake Nasser fishermen explained that other factors were working against the fishermen.“On August 14, 2004, former Minister of Agriculture Youssef Wali issued a decision to divide the lake into six regions, of which 40 percent would be allocated for investors of bottom trawling and 60 percent for fishing associations in Aswan,” he said. “Bottom trawling used modern methods and large fishing boats to develop production. Investors, however, failed in the bottom trawling process so the state decided to grant them the monopoly of purchasing the fish produced from the lake, which made the almost 15,000 fishermen fall victim to exploitation by these investors who imposed unfair prices for the fish.”

Mahmud argues that their decision led to overfishing.

The increased numbers of crocodiles and the government’s failure to crackdown on them have prompted fishermen to use illegal methods to hunt crocodiles. Fisherman Subhi Adel says hunters catch six-meter-long crocodiles and sell their skin at high prices. Some of them, says Adel, use poison or a dye to kill crocodiles.

Environmental balance

But officials argue that crocodiles are a necessary part of the ecosystem. “Crocodiles are not the only reason for the deteriorating fish stock in the lake,” said Major General Mustapha Yussri, Governor of Aswan. “We cannot stop crocodiles from eating, especially since they achieve an environmental balance in the lake and they should not be hunted to preserve them from extinction.”

But Yussri added that fishermen have to hunt the crocodiles that reach the regions allocated for fishing and that some small crocodiles become accidentally trapped in fishing nets.

Minister of Environment Khaled Fahmy says the lake is not a nature reserve. Lake Nasser, he says, is the most important lake in Egypt because it stores the waters of the Nile.

Huge crocodiles multiply in the lake and they feed on small fish,” says Fahmy. “The ministry’s role is to calculate their numbers, monitor their impact on fish production, and conduct a study on how to get rid of some crocodiles either by hunting them or by sending them back to where they come from.”

He stresses that the Ministry of Environment (MoE) is currently negotiating with an international agency to help it compute the numbers of crocodiles in order to resolve the issue.

Conflicting decisions

Head of the MoE Central Department for Biodiversity Dr. Wahid Salamah attributes the crisis to the multiplicity of supervising authorities over the lake, such as the Fish Resources Authority as well as the High Dam Lake Development Authority which is affiliated with the Enterprise Development Agency. He says the state has enacted several national legislation to regulate trading in endangered animals, pointing out that it aims to protect the Nile crocodiles from extinction, controlling the number of crocodiles and investing in their products sustainably, which benefits local communities.

He says the latest calculation made by MoE researchers in late 2014 show that there are no less than 43,000 crocodiles in the lake. It suggests that the Nile crocodiles have many important environmental functions since they prevent the multiplication of catfish and clean the lake of dead bodies, giving rise to the nickname water sweepers. The existence of crocodiles in Lake Nasser, says Salamah, can boost tourism through organizing tourist visits as part of the visits made to the temples in the region, thus creating jobs for many of Aswan’s youth.

He calls for the enforcement of Law No. 1241 of 1983 which obligates fishermen to use one fishing boat per license, sets the number of the openings of nets to 7-8 openings per half square meter, and provides for specific penalties.

Years of talking

Muhammad, however, says he has become weary of officials’ promises to find a solution.

He sells the crocodiles he hunts to druggists who use them to make medicine, aphrodisiacs and perfumes, or to leather traders who use them to make the finest shoes in the world.

As long as the state does not solve the problem of poor production and torn nets, we will keep hunting crocodiles because we either kill them or die; there is no third option,” says Muhammad.