Galjoen

The designation is not sentimental and it is not arbitrary. The galjoen belongs to Dichistiidae, a family of two species found nowhere on earth except southern African coasts — so the fish is not merely a South African favourite, it is a South African animal in a way that a kob or a yellowtail is not.

WHAT THE STATUS HAS ACHIEVED IS RECOGNITION AND NOT PROTECTION. The fish is on the coinage, in the school books and on the club-house wall. It is also, on the research institute's own assessment, a COLLAPSED STOCK: under twenty per cent of its pristine level, and likely sustained at that only because parts of its range are unfished.

THE SASSI LISTING IS RED, WHICH MEANS SOMETHING SPECIFIC. It cannot be bought or sold in South Africa at all. That closes the commercial route and leaves the recreational one, and the recreational one is where the pressure is: this is one of the most frequently targeted shore species in the Western Cape.

WHERE PROTECTION HAS WORKED, IT HAS WORKED FAST. Catch rates inside the De Hoop marine protected area recovered dramatically shortly after closure, and there is a marked difference in both catch rate and size structure between exploited and unexploited ground. Tagging shows a small fraction of adults leaving those areas, which suggests the reserves sustain the fishery next door through adult spillover and probably through egg and larval export as well.

WHICH IS THE USEFUL LESSON AND NOT A DEPRESSING ONE. A fish that is ninety per cent resident is a fish that a closed area protects almost completely — and, by the same token, a fish that a heavily fished gully can be emptied of. The same biology drives both halves.

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 to mature and long-lived for an inshore surf fish: maturity comes at 31–34 cm total length and about five years, and individuals have been aged to twenty-one. That combination — late maturity, long life, extreme site fidelity — is the standard recipe for a fish that a shore fishery can strip locally without anyone noticing until the gully is empty, and it is exactly what happened.

A batch spawner with equal numbers of males and females, spawning from September to February and probably throughout its range. Spawning through the southern spring and summer is why the closed season falls from mid-October to the end of February: the protection is aimed at the spawning fish rather than at a quiet period in the fishing.

Feeds on submerged rock in the surf zone, with brown mussel dominating the diet and other benthic invertebrates making up the rest. The small mouth and the crushing dentition are for prising and breaking shellfish off rock in moving water, not for taking prey. The practical consequence is complete: baits are shellfish and worm, presented hard on the bottom in white water, and a fish bait is largely wasted on it.

Scent and touch dominate in water that is aerated to the point of opacity for much of the time it is feeding. A galjoen finds a mussel bed rather than sighting a bait, which is why a well-anchored natural bait in the right gully outperforms anything worked or moved.

Present through the year on the same ground, with the ninety-per-cent residency that tagging established. It is more abundant in water cooler than 21 degrees and rare on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast, so the fishery is a Western and Eastern Cape one. The best shore fishing traditionally falls outside the closed season — March to mid-October — which is a rule and a season at once.

One of the most frequently targeted species by recreational shore anglers in the Western Cape, and often shot by spearfishers. It is the national fish, it is the species South African shore competitions are built around, and it is the fish the rest of the world does not know exists. It is also SASSI red — it cannot legally be bought or sold — and its stock is considered collapsed at under twenty per cent of pristine levels, sustained partly by unfished refuges and no-take marine protected areas.

A fish that is going back in more often than it is being kept, and the handling should assume that.

SUPPORT IT HORIZONTALLY WITH WET HANDS. It is a deep, heavy-bodied fish and hanging one vertically by the jaw loads the whole weight onto the jaw joint.

RETURN IT INTO THE WATER RATHER THAN AT IT. A fish dropped from the rocks into breaking white water lands stunned. Walk it down and let it swim out of your hands.

THE MOUTH IS SMALL AND THE TEETH ARE FOR CRUSHING SHELL. It is not a fish that will hurt you, but a hook in a small hard mouth needs a de-hooker rather than fingers.

AND CHECK THE CALENDAR BEFORE YOU CHECK THE RULER. There is a closed season on this species over the spring and summer spawning period, and during it the fish is not to be targeted at all.