Lake Malawi
The African rift lake with more fish species than any other
No lake on Earth holds more species of fish than Lake Malawi. The southernmost of the great African rift lakes, this long, deep, clear body of water — known as Nyasa in Tanzania and Niassa in Mozambique — is home to perhaps a thousand species of cichlid, the vast majority found nowhere else. David Livingstone called it the Lake of Stars for the lantern lights of fishing boats glittering across its surface at night. Bordered by golden beaches and steep escarpments, it is a freshwater Galapagos and a lifeline for three nations.
Like Tanganyika to its north, Malawi fills a trench in the East African Rift, dropping to 706 metres against a comparatively modest 29,600-square-kilometre surface. Its deep waters are permanently stratified and oxygen-free below a few hundred metres, so its dazzling biodiversity crowds the warm, sunlit upper layers and rocky shorelines. There the cichlids have radiated into an evolutionary explosion of colour and form, each species adapted to a particular niche — algae-scrapers, snail-crushers, sand-sifters — in a textbook case of rapid speciation.
The lake feeds the Shire River, which drains south to the Zambezi, and supports fisheries that provide much of the protein for the people of Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. A southern stretch is protected as Lake Malawi National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site recognised for its biodiversity. Population pressure, overfishing, sedimentation, and a long-running border dispute between Malawi and Tanzania all shadow its future, but the Lake of Stars endures as one of the natural wonders of the African continent.