The Posting of Fish

                                                         The Posting of Fish

Both recreational fishing, and commercial fishing have been practiced in Port St Johns since humans first started settling here.

Port St Johns as a tourism area, attracts all sorts of fishermen: rock and surf, deep sea, fly fishermen, and many world records have been established in the area.

Salt Water Fly Fishing

Fish sources started dwindling in the 1990's, due to uncontrolled over fishing and exploitation. During the annual  ‘runs’ of cob (aka cape salmon or dagga), Garrick ( Leervis in Afrikaans) and spotted grunter, 100’s of these fish were caught, with catches of 10 or more per fisherman, per night, being common. The fish would be laid out on lawns for photographs, inspection and bragging by the fishermen. 

Discussions would mostly be about what they had been caught on – spoons (shiny metallic shapes in an assortment sizes), plugs (white painted chunks of broom stick like wood) or Rapalas.

Rapalas are a fishing lure developed in Finland. They are fish shaped with a metal lip at the tip of the head, which makes it ‘swim’ better, as in realistically, when retrieved by the fisherman. Rapalas are painted in different colours: green or many other colours, with mackerel type stripes; half red and half white, tuna type iridescent blue, and many other variations.

Fishing tackle shops had a problem because of the different colours that Rapalas came in. Spoons and plugs were easy enough to stock, but Rapalas were a headache. Colour choice of the season depended on what colour Rapala the first few fish were taken on.

If say, the colour that was deemed to be catching the fish was the green with mackerel stripes, only that Rapala would be wanted by fishermen, and it would be the only colour sold. Port St Johns, being where it is, was not the easiest place to get stocks delivered, and tackle shop owners either had to take the chance of choosing a colour and hoping they got it right, or hoping that they would be able to get stock of the colour ‘chosen’ by the first hapless fish to get caught. Other colours would be dead stock, and trying to sell cheaper imitation Rapalas in that colour didn’t work either.

Eventually, responsible fishermen started realising that the overfishing and taking out of 100’s of breeding fish could not be sustainable, so tag and release became the new eco friendly buzz word.

Port St Johns’ resident and legendary fisherman, Anthony, was one of the first fishermen to start practising tag and release. Anthony lived for fishing. When he wasn’t at work, he could be found either on the rocks or on a beach, about to catch what he said he was going to catch. Most fishermen, do the lucky dip type of fishing. A bait or a lure is attached to the end of the line, the line is cast out, and the fisherman waits patiently for something to eat the bait, or take the lure. Then, when a fish is felt on the line, it is fought, and brought to shore, with lots of exclamations about whatever species of fish has been hauled in.

Not so Anthony. He would decide what he wanted to catch, say a 40lb cob,

A shark's fin breaks the surface of the ocean.

or a 200lb Hammerhead shark (real fishermen catch in pounds, not kilos), and would generally do just that. Not many fishermen can plan their catch so precisely.

So Anthony would go fishing for specific species, and help the scientists gather data about our local fish. A fish would be caught, brought out of the water as gently as possible, so as not to shock it into dying, or cause unnecessary wounds on it, by dragging it over rocks. He would weigh it, measure it, make notes about where it was caught, the time of day, take note of its condition, etc, then put a tag into it, and release back into the ocean. The information, with the number on the tag, would sent to ORI (Oceanic Research Institute), and if that same fish was caught by somebody else, it was hoped that they would take the tag’s number, take all the measurements, etc, before ether releasing it again, or eating it.

What a tag looks like.

Through fishermens’ efforts, ORI gathered much hitherto unknown information about fishes lives and their movements.

But that was when the trouble started. The local, uneducated Pondo fishermen could not, and maybe would not, understand the concept of information gathering about fish. After all, the fish lived in the sea, had always been plentiful, and why shouldn’t they always be there for the catching for forever?

To them, Anthony was catching the fish, addressing them, and posting them to his friends in other parts of the country; to be mean and spiteful to the locals, to essentially take their living away from them.

No matter how many people explained the situation to the local fishermen, that what Anthony was doing was helping sustain and protect the species for them, and future generations, the more upset the local fishermen got with Anthony.

And so, they went to the Police Station, and laid charges against Anthony; that he was posting the fish he caught to his friends, and a court case ensued.

We, who have some knowledge of science, of course thought that the whole situation was ludicrous. But it was a very serious matter. The Republic of the Transkei, although 100% supported by the South African Government, was autonomous in its legal system, and laws that were put into place by the Transkei Government,

Long Beach, Port St Johns

were in many cases better suited to a backward society in the 1700’s (e.g marriage laws). So, the Transkei Police, instead of advising those laying the charges, that they were barking up the wrong tree, and not allowing the charges to be laid, now spent time in gathering evidence against Anthony. Rapes, murders, burglaries and other real crimes took a back seat for a while.

The day of the court case arrived. The presiding magistrate was a drunken lout known to the locals as Sidenge, which means stupid in Xhosa. True to form, Sidenge displayed his ignorance splendidly, and allowed the farce to go on, instead of dismissing the case.

The end of Day 1 of the court case, saw the case being remanded to a later date.

Experts had to be called in to give evidence on Anthony’s behalf. Marine biologists and other scientists all took to the stand, and after several days of deliberating, and possibly, maybe because Sidenge had had a not-quite-as-much-alcohol-as-usual day, he behaved in an almost sober magisterial manner; and realised just how spurious the charges were, and the case was dismissed.

Anthony and other tag and release fishermen were unfortunately threatened by local fishermen with guns, so the scientific data collecting for this area became almost non-existent.

Which is possibly why the cob / Cape Salmon numbers are down to about a 1000 breeding adults. 

Food for thought:  1000 breeding adults would have been less than one cob run 30 years ago.