Few fish but many fishers: a case study of shore-based recreational angling in a major South African estuarine port

An assessment of participation, catch and effort in the KwaZulu-Natal shore-based marine linefishery, with comments on management effectiveness

“…Similarly, the current regulations (with the exception of the beach vehicle Table 5: Comparison of mean CPUE of several important linefish species (arranged alphabetically) caught and kept by shore-anglers from three independent linefish surveys conducted in KZN (note: species were selected by their relative importance in the current study) Species 1975-1977(Joubert 1981a-1996 Dunlop and Mann 492 ban) seem to have the support of the majority of shoreanglers. Similar trends were observed by Brouwer et al (1997), Mann et al (2002bMann et al ( , 2003, Pradervand et al (2003), Mackenzie (2005) and Beckley et al (2008). Although the lack of support for the beach vehicle ban is of concern, the fact that very few anglers admitted to driving on the beach suggests that most anglers do abide by this law.…”

“…Catch-and-effort data were obtained by means of a stratified-random roving-creel survey, based on the techniques developed in South Africa (Joubert 1981a, Clarke and Buxton 1989, Brouwer and Buxton 2002, Beckley et al 2008) and elsewhere (Malvestuto et al 1978, Malvestuto 1983, Essig and Holliday 1991, Robson 1991, Pollock et al 1994. The KZN coast was divided into 15 zones (zones 1-6 in the north from Mozambique border to Tongaat River and zones 7-15 in the south from Durban to Port Edward), the same zones as those patrolled by EKZNW in 2009 ( Figure 1).…”

The ichthyofauna in the Port of Ngqura, South Africa

“…The fact that fish are protected from angling within the port may also lead to higher CPUEs than other areas. This is in contrast to both Durban (54 024 shore-angling outings per year, Pradervand et al 2003) and Richards Bay harbours (69 000 shore-angler outings, Beckley et al 2008), which are used extensively as recreational angling locations.…”

“…This is markedly higher than that recorded for Eastern Cape estuaries (0.2 fish angler -1 h -1 , Pradervand and Baird 2002), Eastern Cape shore-angling (0.4 fish angler -1 h -1 , Brouwer and Buxton 2002) or Port Elizabeth shore-angling fisheries (0.3 fish angler -1 h -1 , Clarke and Buxton 1989). It is also an order of magnitude greater than the CPUE for (2) and Sandy Shore habitats (3) the boat-fishery in Durban Harbour (0.11 fish angler -1 h -1 , Pradervand et al 2003) or the boat-(0.08 fish angler -1 h -1 , Everett and Fennessy 2007) and shore-fishery (0.06 fish angler -1 h -1 , Beckley et al 2008) in Richards Bay Harbour. It is also higher than the mean CPUE for the most abundant species, blacktail Diplodus capensis (0.25 fish angler -1 h -1 ) caught within the Tsitsikamma National Park (Götz et al 2008), or the mean overall CPUE for the St Lucia Marine Protected Area (1.2 fish angler -1 h -1 ; Mann 2010).…”

“…Durban (36 species, Pradervand et al 2003) and Richards Bay harbours (46 species, Beckley et al 2008) also support a more diverse fish community than neighbouring estuaries. This is perhaps not surprising given the increased variety of habitats within the port including concrete quay walls, sandy shores and dolosse.…”