Naivasha, Kenya—— For someone who fishes for a living, there's nothing worse than spending more than 18 hours on a lake and bringing nothing home.

Recently, a group of fishermen were said to have been stranded in Kenya's famous Lake Naivasha for a long time, blaming water hyacinth for taking up most of the lake's water.

"They didn't realize that the hyacinths would trap them later," said fisherman Simon Macharia. He said the men even lost their fishing nets.

Water hyacinth is native to South America and was reportedly introduced to Kenya in the 1980s "as an ornamental plant by tourists," said Gordon Ocholla, an environmental scientist at Mount Kenya University.

Water hyacinth was first discovered in Lake Naivasha about ten years ago. It has now transformed into a giant, shiny mat that covers large areas of the lake. For fishermen, invasive plants pose a threat to livelihoods.

Often, the presence of water hyacinth is associated with pollution. Ochola said it is known to thrive in the presence of contaminants, grows rapidly and is considered the most invasive aquatic plant species in the world. It can prevent the penetration of sunlight and affect airflow, affecting the quality of aquatic life.

This has led to a sharp decline in fish populations in Lake Naivasha and some other affected areas.

A 2023 study by the East African Journal of Environment and Natural Resources estimated that water hyacinth's invasion of Kenyan lakes, including Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, costs Kenyan fisheries, shipping and fisheries $150 million to $350 million annually. tourism sector.

The fishermen of Lake Naivasha know this.

"Before we could catch 90 kilograms (198 pounds) of fish per day, but now we can catch 10 to 15 kilograms," Macharia said.

This means daily revenue dropped from $210 to $35.

Fishermen say they have tried to deal with the water hyacinth invasion, but with little success.

"It's growing back faster than we can remove it," Macharia said.

Ochola said there are several ways to deal with the plant, including physically removing it. Another approach is to introduce organisms that feed on it. Or chemicals could be sprayed to kill the plants, "but that's not beneficial because it can harm other aquatic life."

Several attempts were made to convert this plant into a useful commodity.

“The government built a biogas treatment plant near the lake where we were supposed to collect hyacinths, but it never became operational,” Macharia said. He didn't know why.

Recently, fishermen, through a Kenyan start-up, started using a method to convert water hyacinth into biodegradable packaging.

HyaPak was launched in 2022 as a project at Egerton University in Kenya. It is committed to creating environmentally friendly packaging.

“On one hand you have the water hyacinth problem and on the other hand you have the plastic waste pollution problem. What we are trying to do is use the hyacinth problem to solve the plastic waste pollution problem,” said Joseph Nguthiru, founder of HyaPak.

He said he created the program after a disastrous field trip that left him and his classmates stranded on Lake Naivasha.

HyaPak has partnerships with fishermen who harvest water hyacinth and dry it for a negotiable fee. It was then transported to the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute in Nairobi, where HyaPak is based.

There, it's mixed with what Nguthiru calls "proprietary additives" and converted into biodegradable paper material.

HyaPak targets the agricultural sector, making biodegradable bags for seedlings. Over time, the bags break down, releasing nutrients that Ngutiru says are beneficial to the plants.

HyaPak works with 50 fishermen in Lake Naivasha, including Macharia. The company says it can process 150 kilograms of water hyacinth per week, converting it into 4,500 biodegradable packaging.

Experts say scaling up such efforts will be a challenge.

"Such solutions and others already applied by similar startups may be promising and indeed effective, but if they cannot be scaled to higher levels that match the invasiveness of water hyacinth, the problem remains," Ochola said. will continue to exist.”

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