Lake Niassa

Lago Niassa (Lake Niassa) hosts Africa’s most bio-diverse population of fresh water fish species with over 850 described species of fish, most of which belong to the family of Cichlidae, a family of perch-like species. This family is divided up into several groups, one of which is called thembuna, a group of algae eating cichlids. 

These are particularly colorful and those of Mozambique first attracted well-deserved attention in the 1950’s. Dr. Geoffrey Fryer concluded after examining the cichlids of Lago Niassa, that the explosive speciation here was even more spectacular than that studied by Darwin on the Galapagos Islands.