The death toll in Saturday's boat disaster in the central reaches of Lake Malawi has reached 17.
The Oxford team reasoned that if this perturbation was so great, it ought to be evident in the sediments of Lake Malawi.
The victims included a husband and wife visiting relatives on the islands of Likoma on Lake Malawi.
Serving Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique, the 579km-long lake is accessible in Malawi via the towns of Mangochi or Monkey Bay in the south and via Mzuzu, Karonga or Nkhata Bay in the north.
" The IUCN report said: "In Lake Malawi, a group of fish, known as 'chambo' by locals, forms an extremely important source of food.
CNN: Rangers struggle to save endangered fish in Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi contains more than 400 species of the brightly colored fish, all but five endemic to these waters.
CNN: Rangers struggle to save endangered fish in Lake Malawi
The researchers, from the University of Washington and University of California Berkeley in the US and the Natural History Museum, re-examined a number of bones that were first collected from what is now Lake Malawi in southern Africa.
Lake Malawi, also called Lake Nyasa, is the second deepest body of freshwater in Africa and one of the deepest in the world, reaching a depth of 706 meters.
Lake Malawi is classified as a Unesco World Heritage site due to its diversity of endemic fish.
If generations to come are to benefit from the lake -- from its food and potentially its oil -- then Malawi's government faces a challenge of leadership and resource management.
CNN: Troubled water: Oil search fuels tension over Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi is a UNESCO World Heritage site and UNESCO says the lake's importance for studying the evolution of fish is comparable with finches in the Galapagos Islands.
CNN: Rangers struggle to save endangered fish in Lake Malawi
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