A Survey of Fishes of the Tana River at Kora and a Checklist of Fishes of the Tana River.

Abstract

The Tana River drains the southern and eastern slopes of Mount Kenya and the eastern slopes of the Aberdares, and is the largest river in Kenya. It passes through most of Kenya's agro-climatic zones (Sombroek et al, 1980) from zone 1-9 (humid and cold) on Mount Kenya and the Aberdares, to VII-1 (very arid and very hot) over much of the lower Tana. The river has received little ecological attention especially in the Kora region and consequently knowledge of the fish fauna is poor. This scarcity of information is largely due to the lack of economic incentives for development and the inaccessibility of much of this region where road communications are difficult and at times impossible. The upper reaches of the Tana, above about 1500m, were examined by van Someren (1952) and notes on the fishes in the middle reaches have been made by copley (1958), Whitehead (1959) made a collection of fishes on the lower Tana River below Garissa. Following this, a single collection has been made, by the Fisheries Department, Kenya, (Oduol, 1976) from six localities on the lower Tana River below Kora.