Bronze whaler

SOUTH AFRICA REGULATES SEA FISHING SPECIES BY SPECIES, WHICH IS NOT HOW MOST COUNTRIES DO IT.

A recreational permit is the entry ticket and not the whole of it. On top of it sits a minimum size and a daily bag limit SET PER FISH, a closed season on a small number of species, and a cumulative daily cap across everything caught — so being inside the limit for each species separately does not put you inside the limit overall.

THERE IS A CAP ON HOOKS on a rod-and-line permit. A spearfishing permit is separate, allows no breathing apparatus beyond a snorkel, and PROHIBITS SPEARFISHING IN AN ESTUARY — a flat ban rather than a limit, and the rule visitors most often do not know.

A LANDED FISH MUST KEEP ITS HEAD AND TAIL so its length can be checked. Nothing caught on a recreational permit may be sold by anyone. And a small list of species may not be caught, landed or possessed at all.

FISHINGHQ DOES NOT PRINT THE FIGURES, and the reason is on this page rather than in a policy document: the department's own guidance says adjustments may be forthcoming given the acknowledged crisis of linefish, the numbers differ by species and by area and by whether you were standing on a beach or sitting in a boat, and a stale figure on a fishing site is worse than no figure at all. Get the current position from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and get the protected-area position from whichever body manages the stretch of coast you are on.

Slow-growing, late-maturing and long-lived — aged to about thirty years, with maturity in the mid to late teens. Like almost all large sharks it produces few young after a long gestation, which is why a species that is abundant where it occurs is nonetheless assessed as Vulnerable: the population cannot replace adults at anything like the rate a fishery removes them.

Viviparous, with a placental connection, bearing litters of roughly a dozen to twenty pups after a gestation of around a year. Pupping takes place in shallow coastal nursery areas. Low fecundity, late maturity and a long gestation together are the reason shark populations recover over decades rather than years.

A pursuit predator on shoaling fish above all — sardine, mullet, small tuna — with cephalopods and smaller sharks and rays. Its association with the KwaZulu-Natal sardine run is a direct expression of that diet: the shark follows the bait. It hunts cooperatively around bait balls, which is the behaviour the sardine run footage records.

The full requiem shark sensory suite: acute olfaction, a lateral line for detecting movement at distance, and the ampullae of Lorenzini for detecting the electrical fields of prey at close range. That last is why a struggling hooked fish on a beach line attracts sharks and why shore shark fishing works at all.

Follows temperate water and the movement of shoaling prey. The strongest seasonal signal off South Africa is the winter sardine run up the KwaZulu-Natal coast, which draws bronze whalers north out of their normal temperate range in numbers and is the period when they are most conspicuous.

The principal target of South African shore shark angling and a regular boat capture. It is a Vulnerable species with a bag limit of a strict daily bag limit under the general shark and ray rule, and it is not on the prohibited list. Its wider public significance is the KwaZulu-Natal sardine run, where it is the shark in most of the footage.

A LARGE SHARK IS DANGEROUS TO HANDLE AND EASY TO KILL BY ACCIDENT. Both of those are true at once and both drive the same advice.

DO NOT DRAG A SHARK UP A BEACH. The body is supported by water; dragging a large shark onto sand damages internal organs and the fish frequently dies later even though it swam away.

WORK ON IT IN THE SHALLOWS. Unhook in knee-deep water, keep it wet, and keep the time out of the water at zero.

USE A LONG DE-HOOKER OR CUT THE TRACE at the hook. Never put a hand near the mouth. Circle hooks and non-stainless hooks: a circle hooks in the jaw rather than the gut, and a non-stainless hook left in a fish corrodes out.

CONTROL THE TAIL, which is where the power is, and never straddle or sit on a shark for a photograph.

AND CONSIDER WHETHER TO FISH FOR IT. A Vulnerable species with a thirty-year lifespan and a dozen pups a year is not a resource that absorbs much. If the answer is yes, fish for it with tackle heavy enough to land it quickly — a long fight is what kills a released shark.