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Our News
WWF asks anglers to “Send us your fishing stories”
If you are one of South Africa’s estimated 800 000 recreational fishers or anglers then WWF’s new FishforLife programme wants to hear from you.
The ‘citizen science’ FishforLife programme is inviting members of the recreational fishing community to contribute information about their catches and even the “one that got away” to a database that will be used to study the state of South Africa’s marine life.
And if there are some pictures in the photo album of great catches from back in the 1970s or before, then they want those too as a way of establishing how marine environments have changed.
FishforLife is the first leg of a WWF Nedbank Green Trust project called People and the Coast.
Project leader marine biologist, Dr Eleanor Yeld Hutchings, explains: “Citizen science has become a real buzz word and with good reason – if you don’t get citizens and civil society involved in conservation you are fighting a losing battle.
Recreational linefishers are constantly gathering invaluable data, such as how many fish are caught per hour or per day, how big they are and where they are caught.
Says Yeld Hutchings: “This can be used as a strong indicator of the size/health of fish populations but what we have to ensure is that the data is accurate and that it is then inputted in a way that can be used by scientists. This is one of the focus areas of the programme.”
The FishforLife programme has three main elements to it:
- i-Catch: an online, web-based catch monitoring system;
- i-Spot: submissions of digital marine fish records for an existing programme for which the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) owns the South African rights, and which is already being used for plants, birds and other species; and
- FisHistory: where people send in their pre-1970 photographs so that Fish for Life can use them as a historical baseline for recreational fisheries. They will digitize and return pictures to their owners. This baseline will demonstrate the changes over time very clearly.
“We’ll share techniques on how best to tag and release properly and how best to handle fish, and we will share knowledge on why recreational permit limits are important to observe and why Marine Protected Areas are essential to species sustainability,” Yeld Hutchings says.
FishforLife will also involve leading organisations already involved in the citizen scientist and recreational fishing field, including Catch and Release Angling (CARA) and the Oceanographic Research Institute’s (ORI) Fish Tagging Project.
CARA is a tag and release programme where data is sent via sms to 082 TAG FISH while ORI has been monitoring the movement and growth rate of South Africa’s linefish species over the past 20 years.
Over the years, recreational linefishers have signed up for the ORI programme on a voluntary basis. With tags supplied by the ORI they tag the fish that they return to the ocean, and record the data on a data sheet that is sent back to the ORI.
“So, for example, if you’re fishing for Galjoen, and you catch one that is undersized, it’s a great opportunity to tag it, record its size and location, return it to the water and send the data to ORI,” Yeld Hutchings explains.
That same fish might be caught again at some stage, and if the data is recorded it provides an excellent indication of how much the fish has grown in a specific period and how far it has moved.
“Many linefishers are not aware of the regulations and there is a lot of ignorance around the permit system, as well as illegal harvesting. All this needs to be addressed by this and other marine programmes,” she explains.
“The recreational linefishing community can mobilise their considerable marine knowledge and skills, participate in online forums and actively participate in marine conservation through FishforLife.
“It is only when people care about something that they claim ownership of it and put effort into conserving it. We apply this philosophy to the conservation of our ocean.”
© Thomas Peschak
Recreational fishing
© WWF-SA
FishforLife is a project that works with recreational fishers to gather valuable information about the state of South Africa's marine life.