Otter Point
OT-ter POYNT (approx.)
The atlas records 23 collection-point forms from Otter Point, across 15 genera.
14.0391°S 34.8229°E
Otter Point, at the tip of the Nankumba Peninsula by Cape Maclear, is the most intensively studied rocky shore in Lake Malawi — surveyed in Ribbink's classic 1983 rocky-habitat monograph and protected today inside Lake Malawi National Park.
Where it is
Otter Point is on the eastern shore of Lake Malawi, in its southern third (316 mi south of the lake's northern tip).
Nearest collection points: Otter Island 0.2 mi south-west · Mitande Reef (Rocks) 0.9 mi north · Thumbi West Island 1.5 mi north-west
Shore, third and distances are measured from the coordinates above against the lake’s mapped outline.
The water
Lake-wide measured chemistry of Lake Malawi — collection points share their lake's water; site-specific figures are shown only where the literature records them.
Nearest measured station: Monkey Bay (south basin) (~11 km) — Visibility (Secchi) 12.5 m
This site
Surface temperature here
Across Apr–Nov, monthly means run 75 °F to 82 °F — coolest in Jul. Measured by satellite 1995–2023: the daily median of clear readings within 10 km of the site (1452 clear days). The rainy-season months are usually too cloudy to measure and are left blank.
Temperature: ESA Climate Change Initiative, Lakes_cci v3.0 (Asfour et al. 2026; doi:10.5285/a56dba09df8a42ec9fba8b8c7a5e1f69). Chemistry on this page remains the lake's own.
The site
The point is a wave-washed boulder slope at the peninsula's tip, where rocky habitat runs down toward sand in clear, park-protected water. Because it lies within the world's first freshwater national park of its kind, its mbuna community has been observed continuously for decades, and much of what the literature says about rocky-shore cichlid territoriality and diet was worked out on shores like this one.
For the hobby, Otter Point provenance marks populations from the Cape Maclear region of the south-western arm. It is also the lake's most accessible snorkelling site, so this is one of the few collection points many aquarists have seen with their own eyes.
Sources
- Ribbink, A.J., Marsh, B.A., Marsh, A.C., Ribbink, A.C. & Sharp, B.J. (1983). A preliminary survey of the cichlid fishes of rocky habitats in Lake Malawi. South African Journal of Zoology 18(3): 149–310.
- Konings, A. (2016). Malawi Cichlids in their Natural Habitat, 5th Edition. Cichlid Press, El Paso.
Each entry below is the population of that species recorded here — the form aquarists keep and breed as a distinct, provenance-labelled line. Crossing forms from different collection points is considered hybridisation in the hobby.