Fisheries of inland water bodies in Malaysia

Abstract

Lotic waters dominate the Malaysian aquatic environment. There are very few natural lakes in Malaysia. There are only two principal lenthic environments in Malaysia. They are Tasek Chini and the Tasek Bera/Tasek Dampar complex. Both of these lakes located in Pahang, are relatively small in size. Tasik Bera is more of a freshwater swamp than a true lake, covered with stands of littoral, floating, emergent and submerge vegetation, such as Lepironia articulata and Pandanus helicopus, and very few truly open water spaces (Furtado & Mori, 1982). They reported 95 species of fishes from Tasik Bera. Almost all of these species were endemic to Peninsular Malaysia. They also highlighted the difficulties of estimating fish abundance in Tasik Bera because of the small size of fish, presence of large numbers of refuges where the fish are inaccessible and the low intensity of fish catches by the natives.