Rare sardine run churns Algoa Bay

Concern over destruction of marine environment , writes Guy Rogers

AFTER a five-year hiatus, purse seine fishermen sprang into action in Algoa Bay recently to take advantage of a flurry of sardine activity.

Several catches were made before the shoal disappeared only to be sighted a few days later off East London “moving at a very fast pace towards Durban”.

Eastern Cape Small Pelagic Association (Ecspa) members are hoping the fish will return towards the end of the year in terms of the historic pattern of the “sardine run”.

But reports of rogue foreign fishing vessels, seismic exploration and the impact of climate change have raised questions about the distribution and resilience of the sardine stock. The demands of the trawlers, the needs of natural predators like the endangered African penguin and the creation of the new Addo Marine Protected Area (MPA) are further complicating matters.

Launched in 1992, the Eastern Cape sardine fishing industry has five vessels and six processing factories. The factories are in Port Elizabeth and St Francis Bay and the vessels fish out of Mossel Bay when the sardines are not closer to home, Ecspa chairman Redah de Maine said this week.

Despite the extra cost, the association has been trucking its Mossel Bay catch back to Port Elizabeth for processing to ensure retention of factory jobs and compliance with its long term fishing rights, he said.

The fish are prepared as bait for long line fishing, frozen and most of it is then exported.

At its peak in 2002, Port Elizabeth-based trawlers were landing 125 tons of sardines a night providing jobs to 1050 factory workers and 300 fishing crew, he said.

But periodic El Ninõ events, the global climate phenomenon sparked by warm water pooling in the Pacific, had caused problems.

“During those periods we had less south-easter winds causing the upwelling needed to bring the nutrient-rich water with its phyto plankton on which the sardines feed, to the surface. So the sardines dwindled off the Eastern Cape coast, with no viable volumes caught here since 2010.

“Seismic surveys worsened matters and sardine stocks moved into the deep, too far out to sea for the purse seine fishermen to operate in the strong currents.”

The trawlers use a purse seining technique where a line passes through rings at the bottom of the trawl net and, when the line is pulled, it draws the rings together, preventing the fish from sounding to escape.

Seismic activity to find possible caches of oil or gas beneath the ocean floor was undertaken off South Africa’s east coast in 2013 and is on again this year, raising concerns from the boat-based whale watching industry.

Multiple “air guns” are fired over a prolonged period from the seismic exploration vessels into the sea. The sound waves penetrate the seabed and bounce back to the surface to be captured by hydrophones, allowing for the geology of the seafloor to be mapped. International studies have shown increasing evidence that the noise from the air guns is having a negative impact on marine life.

After the long dry patch for sardine trawling in Eastern Cape waters, Ecspa received news in January of large shoals off Algoa Bay and in February and March “the bay was boiling with sardine”, De Maine said.

Most trawlers were dry-docked for repair except for one boat that was able to land 200 tons in eight days before the fish disappeared abruptly at the end of last month, he said.

Senior Department of Forestry and Fisheries (Daff) inspector Dennis Mostert confirmed that sardine catches were made in the bay at that time. But he also confirmed the reports from top Port Elizabeth-based dive tour operator Rainer Schimpf that the sardines are “running thick in Gansbaai”, near Hermanus.

Speaking from Gansbaai this week, Schimpf said the talk among fishermen and tour operators in that area was about one thing – “the foreign fishing fleet that is raping our resources”.

Schimpf, whose company Expert Tours brings in international underwater photographers to film South Africa’s sardine bait balls – the shoaling phenomenon accompanied by a feeding frenzy of sharks, dolphins and seabirds – said the recent bungled apprehension of nine unmarked vessels off the Wild Coast and the arrest of three this week (Monday May 23) in the East London Harbour was the tip of the iceberg.

“It’s not just the Chinese it’s also Spanish, Portuguese and Taiwanese vessels. They spread over large areas and ‘herd’ the fish into their nets.

“Our experience is that the ordinary South African fisherman is obeying the law but these guys are just hauling everything out.”

Schimpf said his recce dives in Algoa Bay earlier this year had revealed no bait ball activity and this situation prevailed all the way down to Mossel Bay. He said his assessment was that this stretch had been fished out by these rogue foreign boats.

Daff fisheries scientist Janet Coetzee said the sardines in South Africa’s waters were thought to comprise west and east stocks located either side of Cape Agulhas and a third “run stock”, probably the winter spawning migration from the east stock fish.

Whether Ecspa’s catches in Algoa Bay arose from changes in fish distribution or availability is unclear, she said.

“We have received reports of pelagic fish, likely sardine, accompanied by predators including gannets and dolphins, moving northwards off East London. This is a regular occurrence heralding the start of the sardine run but we have not received any further reports of sardine activity and they have not been observed or caught off the KwaZulu-Natal coast yet this year.”

New research is meanwhile showing that climate change is causing indirect die-offs of sardines on the South Coast.

A paper published in June last year by a team of experts headed by Daff senior fisheries scientist Dr Carl van Lingen said climate change was sparking blooms of harmful marine algae. Fed on by the sardines, the algae, predominantly Gonyaulax polygramma,, irritates the fishes’ digestive system, causing them to stop feeding, lose condition and die, the report said.

A final twist in the sardine’s tail is that SANParks is seeking to establish the extensive Addo MPA in Algoa Bay to ensure the survival of precious reefs, fish like red roman and kob – and sardines, which feed the penguins which have found a stronghold on the bay islands.

De Maine said Ecspa did not believe the MPA could protect sardine as they are a highly mobile species, and the association is calling for special access to the area except for a 20km fishing exclusion zone around St Croix Island.

SANParks’s senior marine scientist Dr Ané Oosthuizen said the Environment Department was processing all comment which had been received on the MPA and she could not comment further on this call at this stage.