Abstract

Fish is an extremely perishable food product which requires proper handling soon after harvest. This study was conducted from June 2020 to December 2020 to determine the kinds, extent of fish Post-Harvest Losses (PHL) and to propose the intervention required to prevent fish post-harvest losses in Lake Ziway. To this end, Informal Fish Loss Assessment Method (IFLAM), Load Tracking (LT) and the Questionnaire Loss Assessment Method (QLAM) were used to assess the causes and to estimate the extent of Post-harvest fish losses. Simple random sampling was used to select 201 fishermen, 43 fish processors, 28 fish sellers and 15 hotel owners while questionnaires were administered. Post-harvest fish loss from 2010 to 2020 was estimated to be 643 tones from the total 20,273 tons produced. The types of losses that were identified in the study area included quality losses (57% or 366.51 tones), physical losses (35% or 225.05 tones), and market force losses (8% or 51.44 tones). The leading causes of postharvest fish losses in the study area included harvesting immature fish (36.24%), high environmental temperatures (29.97%), infrastructures problems (18.12%), absence (delayed) marketing (9.756%) and increasing number of boats (5.923%). The loss of resources regarding money was found to be 160,750,000 Ethiopian Birr (ETB) which is equivalent to 4,230,263 United States Dollar (USD) on this study area. From this study result, giving extension services, capacity building, maintaining fish as cold as possible, giving training, allowing recommended fishing net, controlling illegal fishing and fish trading are recommended to decrease the problem of post-harvest fish losses in Lake Ziway according to the information obtained from participants of the research.