Albertsee

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Albertsee (disambiguation) .

Albertsee
Geographical location	DR Congo , Uganda ( East Africa )
Tributaries	Victoria Nile , Semliki
Drain	Albert Nile
Places on the shore	Butiaba
Data
Coordinates	1 ° 41 ′  N , 30 ° 55 ′  E Coordinates: 1 ° 41 ′  N , 30 ° 55 ′  E
Altitude above sea level	619  m
surface	5,347 km²
length	160 km
width	30 km
volume	132 km³
Maximum depth	48 m
Middle deep	25 m

The Lake Albert (Lake Albert) is in Africa on the border of Uganda to the Democratic Republic of Congo .

Geographical data

Albertsee at the outflow into the Albert Nile

Lake Albert is east of the great Central African threshold and west of the vast Uganda highlands. It is part of the East African Rift Valley , directly north of the Ruwenzori Mountains . It has a maximum length of 170 km and a maximum width of 30 km. To the west are the Blue Mountains of Eastern Congo.

The water surface of the 5347 km² lake is 619  m ; In prehistoric times it is said to have been at 915  m : The formation of the above-mentioned rift led to the continental plates moving apart and the bottom of the trench to sink.

The very fish-rich Albertsee is fed, among other things, by two important tributaries: These are the Victoria Nile , which comes from Lake Victoria to the southeast , and the Semliki , which flows in from Lake Eduard , about 150 km further south . Its outflow is the Albert Nile , which leaves the lake as part of the White Nile at the northern end.

In the northeast it borders on the Murchison Falls National Park , in the south on the Semliki Wildlife Sanctuary .

fauna

The Albertsee is inhabited by 46 species of fish, seven of which are endemic , meaning that they only occur here. Four of the endemic species are cichlids from the genus Haplochromis ( H. albertianus , H. avium , H. bullatus & H. mahagiensis ). The Albertsee shares the non-endemic species (e.g. H. wingatii ) with the Nile and its tributaries. Four endemic molluscs were also discovered, a mussel and three species of snail. Commercial fishing is limited to three species, the two tetra species Alestes baremose and Hydrocynus forskahlii, and the Nile perch ( Lates niloticus ). In addition to the Nile perch, Lates macrophthalmus is a second type of giant perch in Lake Albert, which is endemic there .

history

The lake was rediscovered for Great Britain in 1864 by the British Samuel White Baker and his future wife Florence . In honor of the Prince Consort of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, Prince Albert , who died in 1861 , he named it Albertsee .

In the 1930s Butiaba was a busy fishing port and an important relay station on the British airboat route from Cairo to Cape Town . A ferry service was established between Ntoroko and Butiaba. The outdoor shots for the cult film African Queen with Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart were filmed here in 1951 . In the severe floods of 1962, the ferry and the port facilities were almost completely destroyed and then not rebuilt.

In 1973 the Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko named the lake after himself, but after his fall in 1997 the name quickly disappeared.

On March 22, 2014, after an accident, a refugee ferry from Senjojo in the Kyangwali Hoima district, Democratic Republic of the Congo , sank in front of the Ugandan landing zone Kitebere Parish in the Mityana district, killing 108 people. The captain was able to save himself from sinking and was then taken into police custody. 41 refugees from the sinking ferry were rescued and then came to the Ntoroko Hospital in Bamba in the Ntoroko District for treatment.

present

There is a fish factory in Butiaba that supplies all of Uganda. In other small places on the lake, fishing is only done for local needs. Salt production on the lakeshore was given up in the 1980s. On the southern edge of the lake, oil deposits have been discovered since 2001 , which Hardman Petroleum and Heritage Oil have been developing and preparing for oil production since 2006 .

The oil discoveries led to border disputes between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in July 2007. Several people, including a British geologist, died in firefights. The small island of Rukwanzi at the southern end of the lake was occupied by Congolese soldiers. Despite an agreement between the two states to resolve the conflict peacefully, armed clashes broke out again on the lake. The exact course of the border is still controversial.

literature

• Andrew Roberts: Uganda's Great Rift Valley . New Vision, Kampala 2006, ISBN 9970-11-300-3

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ethelwynn Trewavas : Lake Albert fishes of the genus Haplochromis. Annals and Magazine of Natural History: Series 11 Volume 1, Issue 4, 1938, DOI: 10.1080 / 00222933808526788
2. ↑ Petru Banaescu: Zoogeography of Fresh Waters . Page 1138, AULA, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 3-89104-480-1
3. ^ FAO Information on Fisheries Management in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
4. ↑ Lates macrophthalmus on Fishbase.org (English)
5. ↑ Daily Monitor : Boat Accident: Death toll rises to 108 of March 24, 2014
6. ↑ New Vision : Lake disaster: What happened? ( Memento of March 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) of March 24, 2014
7. ↑ New Vision : Boat disaster pilot arrested as search continues from March 24, 2014