Hauling the net in - while it is dragging anything that lives into it.
A harmless houndshark caught in the net.
"By-catch" - stingrays, skates, St. Joseph and other sharks. Oh, and a few edible fish.
More of the same.
And unfortunately some more.
All images courtesy Erika Gouws
Treknetting is an age-old and simple way of catching many fish from shore: using a little rowboat a net is taken offshore and thrown overboard. This net has floaters at the top, and sinkers at the bottom, with the ends connected to ropes which reach the beach. From there, using many hands, the net is slowly brought to shore, with the net reaching from the surface to the bottom. Used on sandy beaches, to avoid snagging the net on rocks, it captures anything not fast enough to move out of the way - including shoals of fish, but especially many bottom-dwelling fish, like stingrays, skates and similar. Many fish caughts are not usable and are considered "by-catch". Even if returned to the sea mortality within this by-catch is high.
In late April a treknet operation near Muizenberg resulted in very little usable catch, and much by-catch, as the following report by Georgina Jones shows:
"Earlier this week the owner of a dive operation in Strand was on his way to dive at Long Beach and passed a group of trek netters on Muizenberg. He stopped because he noticed an enormous number of animals being brought in as bycatch. From his report to me, these included: 200-300 St. Joseph sharks, several eagle rays, a guitar shark, a blue spotted ray and 'hundreds' of shysharks, all of which the trekkers just left lying, alive, on the beach, apart from the shysharks, which they were apparently killing."
The images shown, taken by Erika Gouws, who happened to see the operation as well, clearly shows what the catch actually consisted of.
In an e-mail to the DEAT as well as SANParks, Georgina asked the following: "Surely the trekkers should not be leaving bycatch alive on the beach? How does the trekking permit process work? From what was gathered, a permit entitled the fishermen to trek ten times every month this amounts to an extraordinary quantity of animals being needlessly killed."
A reply was received from a senior official of SANParks:
"Hi Georgina,
Since receiving your mail, I have been able to get copies of the conditions under which they are allowed to trek. It does possibly answer some of your questions, but not all. If you get a response from MCM I would like to see what they have to say. My interpretation of the conditions are as follows, they are allowed to take elasmobranches as a by catch (except those on the protected list), but they are not allowed to leave any part of their catch on the beach, what is not collected for sale, it must be returned to the sea "unharmed". It cannot be dumped. They do have to inform MCM prior to trekking."
The sad reality is that whether the permit conditions are followed or not, the damage done is substantial. Given that Muizenberg corner is the one edge of the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area (MPA), having such carnage happen so close to the MPA mocks the whole idea of an MPA. That fishing is allowed within that MPA except for a few areas which were previously closed anyway is bizarre enough, but to have any fish which may benefit from less fishing pressure with the MPA get caught just outside it, well, it makes one wonder what the point is. Without a doubt research has shown that "no fishing" areas serve as "replenishment" areas for fish stocks, but the ability of any area to replenish such stocks is limited, and surely the idea is not simply to catch everthing that comes out of it, leaving the overfished areas as barren as before. Whether the by-catch originated from the MPA or not is very hard to tell, and given the size of False Bay, not necessarily likely, but such persistent pressure will have an effect, especially if the catch is left to rot on the beach.
What makes all of this even harder to stomach is that divers wanting to dive in the MPA have to purchase a permit - supposedly so we can enjoy the "pristine" nature of the MPA, except if this continues it will be pristine simply because of a lack of any fish to be seen!
Methods such as treknetting are outdated and wasteful. While one can understand that some people may be able to make a living from such fishing, the cost to the environment is simply too high, and it really is time that the method be stopped entirely.