Nile perch Nile perch The Nile perch ("Lates niloticus") is a species of freshwater fish in family Latidae of order Perciformes. It is widespread throughout much of the Afrotropic ecozone, being native to the Congo, Nile, Senegal, Niger and Lake Chad, Volta, Lake Turkana, and other river basins. It also occurs in the brackish waters of Lake Maryut in Egypt. The Nile perch is a fish of substantial economic and food-security importance in East Africa. Originally described as "Labrus niloticus," among the marine wrasses, the species has also been referred to as "Centropomus niloticus". Common names include African snook, Victoria perch (a
White Nile Lake Kyoga to Lake Albert), the "Albert Nile" (to the South Sudan border) and then the "Mountain Nile" or "Bahr-al-Jabal" (down to Lake No). "White Nile" may sometimes include the headwaters of Lake Victoria, the most remote of which being from the Blue Nile. The 19th-century search by Europeans for the source of the Nile was mainly focused on the White Nile, which disappeared into the depths of what was then known as "Darkest Africa". The White Nile's true source was not discovered until 1937, when the German explorer Burkhart Waldecker traced it to a stream in Rutovu, at the