Geelbek

Two South African fish, one management tool, opposite conclusions from the same research institute — and the difference is nothing to do with policy.

ON THE ROMAN it records that the stock is assessed as optimally exploited and attributes the stability partly to spillover from the Tsitsikamma and Goukamma marine protected areas.

ON THE GEELBEK it records that the species is migratory and that there is NO EVIDENCE TO DATE that marine protected areas are effective in its management.

THE MECHANISM IS THE HOME RANGE. A roman lives its adult life within a hundred metres of linear extent. Draw a line around its reef and you have protected that fish, permanently, for its whole life. Its larvae drift out. Some adults spill over. The reserve exports fish to the fishery next door.

A GEELBEK RUNS FROM THE WESTERN CAPE TO KWAZULU-NATAL AND BACK EVERY YEAR. Any reserve it passes through protects it for as long as it is inside, which is days. The rest of the year it is outside, being fished, by everybody along a two-thousand-kilometre coast.

WHICH IS WHY THE INSTITUTE'S HOPE FOR THIS SPECIES IS A DIFFERENT MEASURE ENTIRELY. It names the declaration of the Protea Banks and Thukela marine protected areas and the extension of the Aliwal Shoal MPA — and specifically the ASSOCIATED BAN ON NIGHT FISHING that comes with them. Not the area. The night ban. Because a fish whose whole vulnerability is a night spawning aggregation is protected by stopping night fishing over the aggregation, and by nothing else.

THE GENERAL POINT IS WORTH TAKING AWAY. 'Do marine protected areas work?' is not a question with an answer. It is a question about a particular fish's movement, and the answer changes completely between two species on the same reef.

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.

Fast-growing and short-lived by the standards of this coast — maturing at 90 cm fork length and five years, and aged to a maximum of only nine. That is a very different life history from the reef sparids, and it means the species should in principle recover quickly. That it has not, despite the effort cut of the early 2000s, says how heavily the spawning aggregations are being fished.

Spawning occurs from August to November in KwaZulu-Natal waters, mainly over offshore reef in forty to sixty metres, where the fish form LARGE SPAWNING AGGREGATIONS AT NIGHT. Adults migrate annually from the Western Cape to reach them and return south over the Agulhas Bank in summer. A species that concentrates its entire reproductive effort into a few weeks in a known place at a known time of day is the most catchable animal in any fishery, which is precisely the problem.

Adults hunt shoaling pelagic fish — sardine, mackerel and maasbanker — in open water. Juveniles feed on mysid shrimps and anchovies in shallower water in the south-eastern and south-western Cape. This is a pursuit predator on baitfish, which is why it is taken on live bait, drift bait and lures rather than on static bottom baits.

Sight and the sciaenid sound apparatus, hunting shoaling prey in open water. The family produces and detects low-frequency sound with the swimbladder, and for a fish that forms night spawning aggregations that is likely to be how the aggregation assembles — which is also how a boat with a sounder finds one.

THE MOST STRONGLY SEASONAL FISH IN THIS FILE. Adults run from the Western Cape to KwaZulu-Natal to spawn in spring, spawn from August to November, and return south over the Agulhas Bank in summer. A geelbek is a fish that is somewhere for a period rather than a fish that lives at a mark, and the fishery moves with it up and down the coast.

An important seasonal catch of the boat-based commercial and recreational line fisheries, and one of the best eating fish on the coast — which is why it is called Cape salmon. Spawning aggregations are actively targeted at night during spring in KwaZulu-Natal. The 2017 assessment found spawner biomass at approximately ten to eleven per cent of pristine and the stock considered collapsed, despite some recovery after the commercial effort cut of 2003 to 2006. SASSI red, a minimum size, a daily bag limit.

A soft, fast-spoiling fish that is usually being kept, and a fish that should be released carefully when it is not.

IF IT IS BEING KEPT, BLEED AND ICE IT IMMEDIATELY. Geelbek flesh deteriorates quickly and a fish killed well is a completely different thing on the plate from one left on a deck.

IF IT IS GOING BACK, mind the barotrauma from forty to sixty metres and use a descending device.

SUPPORT HORIZONTALLY. A slim fish of this length is easily damaged by being lifted by the head.

AND THINK ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE. A fish taken from a spawning aggregation in spring is a fish taken from the ten per cent of the population that is still breeding.