White steenbras
Photo by Erika Gouws
The white steenbras occurs from Angola to the Eastern Province, in shallow water over sand and close to reefs. It is considered a superb eating fish and is liked by line fishermen for its fight. In v.d.Elst's "Common Sea Fishes". published 1981, it is stated that the population is little exploited, but in Heemstra and Heemstra's "Coastal Fishes" the picture changes substantially, stating that due to estuarine degradation and overfishing the population collapsed in 2002, and requires careful monitoring and catch restrictions for numbers to recover.
This fish was caught in a trek net close to Muizenberg (for more details see the News 2009 section "Beach carnage"), where little of value seems to have been caught - mostly sharks and related, with this fish possibly one of the few valuable ones - except that alive it would have done more good than dead...
Coastal Fishes of Southern Africa, P. Heemstra, and E. Heemstra, 2004
A guide to the common sea fishes of Southern Africa, R. v.d. Elst, 1991.