Cape knifejaw

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.

Not well documented. What is established is that it is a reef-associated endemic reaching about ninety centimetres and occurring down to a hundred and fifty metres, with juveniles in shallower rocky ground. The absence of an IUCN assessment reflects how little formal work has been done on it.

Not well documented for this species. Knifejaws generally spawn in coastal water with pelagic eggs and a distinctive pelagic juvenile stage that associates with drifting weed and debris before settling onto reef — which is why juvenile knifejaws are sometimes found far from adult habitat.

Shears hard-shelled invertebrates — urchins, mussels, barnacles — directly off rock with the fused beak. It is one of very few fish able to remove firmly attached prey, and that specialisation is why it holds on high-relief reef where the food is fixed rather than moving.

Close-range vision over structured reef, working a known patch of rock rather than searching. It is a fish that lives on a specific piece of ground and knows it, which is what makes it approachable by a diver and unhelpful to an angler covering water.

Reef-resident year-round with no documented migration. Availability to a spearfisher is a question of visibility and swell rather than season, and availability to an angler is largely a question of luck.

Much more a spearfishing species than an angling one, and for a mechanical reason: a fused beak gives a hook almost nothing to hold and can cut a trace. It is a prized and difficult spearfishing target on South African reef. The recreational rules are a daily bag limit with no minimum size, which — given that no assessment of the species exists — is a limit set on the absence of information rather than on the presence of it.

THE BEAK IS THE HAZARD AND IT IS A REAL ONE. A jaw that shears mussel shell off rock will take a finger down to the bone. Keep hands entirely clear of the mouth and use a de-hooker.

HANDLE A SPEARED FISH BY THE BODY, never by the head or the gill.

A fish being released goes back horizontal and supported. From depth it may need venting.