Fish processing and marketing

Sun dried Kapenta. Image credit blogspot.com

• Subsistence and commercial fishers employ more or less the same processing methods.
• The high tropical temperatures mean that fish go bad very quickly after being landed from the lakes rivers and swamps.
• Small fish like the matemba/kapenta are sun dried on drying platforms before marketing.
• The large fish such as the chambo and mlambo are opened up, cleaned and salted before either being sun dried or smoked.
• Fresh fish are sold to the local markets.
• The commercial fishing companies use refrigerated vans to transport fresh fish to the market.
• Subsistence fisheries buy ice from a small plant at Mangochi.
• Commercial catches are landed at fishing ports like Likoma island before they are dispatched to local markets in town.
• The town of Limbe near Blantyre has a small refrigeration plant for storing fish.
• Some of the fish are exported to other SADC countries like Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

To access more topics go to the O Level Geography Notes page