Pondoland Bottom Fishing

[Tommo]

I just got back from a trip down to Port Edward on the lower KZN Southcoast. I was fishing with a research team from ORI, including Bruce Mann and Jade Maggs. We launched each morning at 5.am from Port Edward ski boat club and ran south to the Pondoland MPA area. We were bottomfishing with bait and big KP reels with 80lb line.
The object of the trip was to tag fish and to record the sizes and numbers of fish caught in the no-take zone (sanctuary area) and compare them with catches in the adjacent controlled fishing areas.
It was really interesting to see the recovery of the linefish species within the MPA, which was declared in 2004. The numbers of fish were staggering, with three of us fishing we landed 194 fish on the first day. The size and quality of the fish was also exceptional. Of those 194 fish, 20 were recaptures (already sporting tags).
It was interesting to note that the fishing outside of the sanctuary areas was understandably less succesful, with around a quarter of the number of fish landed during the same amount of time fished. The fish were significantly smaller, with very few fish being over legal size. A number of fish caught in the controlled fishing area had tags in them, and had clearly come from the sanctuary area.
 
The importance of these MPA's was very clear to me. These species need an area where they can breed, or grow to maturity undisturbed and the overflow from the MPA is of benefit to the adjacent fishing areas. Hopefully with some areas being protected we will continually have overflow into free fishing areas and there will always be fish to catch in future.
 
I am attaching some pics to show the quality of some of the fish caught.

[PH]

Interesting report, Tommo, thanks.
Those are beautiful, healthy fish.!!

[Zetti]

Good to know that this is working. With all the negativity around us we need to hear things like this.
 
 

[krissi]

Wow - beautiful, healthy specimens ... great to see  :shre:

[WalkersKiller]

Nice stuff Tommo beautiful fish there!  :shre:

[Mudcrab]

Very interesting :shre:

[FritzAbu]

In deed interesting post and glad to notice that the line fish are making a good recovery .

[John F]

Thanks for the post Tommo.

Yeah MPAs work. The science behind it has been more than established. What's missing is political will and public support. By public support, I mean not only NGOs but society as a whole.

They work and don't need to be huge to be effective!

[Manuel Junior]

 :shre:

[CASTSA]

Much cred to you guys, and much cred to all the MPAs........I do hope with the growth of the sport we can secure more of these areas and ensure our fish stocks have a healthy future..........

What depth did you fish at Tommo?, Did you find Coppers in shallowér water in the MPAs??

Facinated by this fish of late....

Such a champ, well done bud.........Hope you got good footage

[Tommo]

Hey Wes, we didn't get any coppers or sevs, we fished at a maximum depth of about 26m, so too shallow for some of those species. The reason being that with the project being around C&R and tagging being important the guys don't want to fish deep due to barotrauma issues. It was amazing though to see what we did catch in shallow water, such as Scotsman and Slinger in 15m of water and some nice black musselcracker. The rockcod were also awesome, particularly some big yellowbelly and catface. 

[CASTSA]

That's brilliant, was hoping that with the area being a MPA that the Coppers may have come to the shallower reefs...
Very happy with those recaptures, just shows you how residential these fish are and how much damage constant bottom fishing does to the eco-system on these reefs..
I hope in the near future, more of these MPAs become a big part of our lifestyle...

Great Job Tommo, thanks for the share!

[CASTSA]

I would love to scuba dive those shallow reefs and experience the strong system, first hand!....
Its amazing how these systems adapt and grow when the fishing pressure is not on the day to day life of these fish....

[Tommo]

Thanks Bud, It would be very cool to dive there! I saw some footage that the guys had taken on a Go-Pro camera during a transect count dive in the MPA and the volume of fish is amazing. Everywhere you look there are fish!
I could imagine it when we were fishing, cos your bait just hits the bottom and it is fish on, immediately. We averaged a fish every two minutes during our session in the sanctuary. Pretty awesome stuff!
 
Just for interest we were using barbless circle hooks, and they worked like a bomb. Even some small fish such as fransmadam and small slingers, scavengers etc were being hooked on a 6/0 circle hook. Those things are deadly.