The artisanal fishery for East Coast rock lobstersPanulirus homarusalong the Wild Coast, South Africa

Abstract

IntroductionEast coast rock lobsters Panulirus homarus are collected by the indigenous people of the Wild Coast, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and are sold to coastal hotels and holidaymakers. The South African government has proposed a small-scale commercial fishery based on P. homarus to improve socio-economic conditions in that region. Catch data and information on fishery operations were collected for the artisanal fishery from Coffee Bay, Presley Bay, Port St Johns and Mbotyi, as well as from a commercial buying station near the Mdumbi Estuary, between March 2003 and October 2005. The catch per unit effort of rock lobster poling varied from 13.5 ± 7.7 fisher -1 outing -1 at Port St Johns to 5.9 ± 3.1 fisher -1 outing -1 at Coffee Bay, but the number of fishers or fishing frequency could not be verified. About two-thirds of the lobsters caught (69%) were smaller than the minimum legal size. Hotels and the buying station complied with size limits, but cottages and campers often bought undersized lobsters. Smaller lobsters (females) are caught by poling than by diving. Geographical variations in poling effort and lobster mean sizes could be indicators of heavy fishing pressure on shallow, inshore reefs. The implications of commercialising the fishery and its associated management are discussed.

Movement patterns of the East Coast rock lobster Panulirus homarus rubellus on the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

“…However, the juvenile population, inhabiting mainly inshore reefs would become vulnerable to fishing if adherence to the MSL was poor. The high level of residency observed during the study would facilitate overexploitation in areas with high fishing mortalities and poor adherence to the MSL, such as in the Eastern Cape (Steyn et al 2008) unless larvae are widely distributed. Larval dispersal and acoustic tracking studies to establish the home ranges of P. homarus rubellus populations are thus needed to establish the vulnerability of this species to localised overexploitation.…”