Red stumpnose

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, non-migratory and confined to a narrow depth band, in the pattern of the Cape reef sparids. It is a protogynous hermaphrodite like the rest of its genus, so the largest fish are the males, and a fishery that selects for size selects for them.

Spawns over reef with pelagic eggs and larvae, changing sex from female to male with size. Its non-migratory habit means the spawning stock is the fish on the same reef rather than a population that mixes along the coast, which is what makes a locally heavy fishery locally decisive.

A reef feeder on invertebrates, cephalopods and small fish over structure in twenty to fifty metres. Squid is the standard bait, fished on the reef from an anchored or drifting boat.

Vision and lateral line at close range over a known patch of reef. Non-migratory means it knows its ground, which is what makes it approachable and what makes a productive mark stay productive until it does not.

Non-migratory: the fish is on the same reef all year. There is no season to time and no movement to intercept, which is both why the fishing is reliable and why the stock is where it is.

A Cape ski-boat and spearfishing species taken as part of a mixed reef catch, and universally called Miss Lucy. It is a commercial species with a recreational limit of a strict daily bag limit at a minimum size. Endangered on the July 2024 IUCN assessment, and the practical position is that a red stumpnose should be released with a descending device wherever it can be.

AN ENDANGERED FISH FROM TWENTY TO FIFTY METRES, which means the release is the whole question.

USE A DESCENDING DEVICE. Barotrauma applies from about thirty metres and this fish lives there.

DECIDE BEFORE IT IS ABOARD. A fish that spends five minutes on a hot deck is not going back successfully.

STIFF SPINES, A HARD MOUTH, a de-hooker, and horizontal support.

AND MOVE OFF A MARK THAT KEEPS PRODUCING THEM. A non-migratory endemic caught repeatedly from one reef is one small population being fished.