Seventy-four

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.

A slow-growing, late-maturing, aggregating reef sparid. The combination of an aggregating spawning habit and a fishery that knew where and when the aggregations formed is the whole of the collapse: a fleet working a spawning reef removes reproductive output rather than a share of a population, and the species has not recovered in the decades since.

Forms dense spawning aggregations on known offshore reefs, which is what made it both the mainstay of a fishery and the fish that fishery destroyed. Oceanodromous, moving between grounds seasonally. The aggregating habit is the single most important fact about this species and the reason a prohibition rather than a bag limit was the response.

A reef feeder taking fish, cephalopods and invertebrates over structure from about thirty metres down. It takes a bait readily, which is part of why it was so heavily fished and why an accidental capture on a modern reef trip is entirely possible.

Vision and lateral line at close range over deep reef. Nothing about its senses protects it from a baited hook, which is why the protection has to be a rule.

Oceanodromous, moving seasonally between grounds and aggregating to spawn. The recovery of the species, if it happens, depends on those aggregations being left alone, which is what the prohibition is for.

NONE THAT IS LAWFUL. The seventy-four is on the South African prohibited species list: no person may catch, land or be in possession of one under any permit. Its significance is historical and cautionary — it was the most important line fish in KwaZulu-Natal and it was fished off its own spawning reefs until there was nothing left to aggregate. It is Endangered on the IUCN assessment of July 2024.

RETURN IT IMMEDIATELY, with as little harm as possible. That is the legal requirement and it is not conditional on anything.

DO NOT BRING IT ABOARD if it can be released at the side of the boat. Do not take it out of the water for a photograph.

UNHOOK WITH A LONG DE-HOOKER over the water, or cut the trace at the hook.

IT WILL HAVE BAROTRAUMA from reef depth and will not swim down on its own. USE A DESCENDING DEVICE. A prohibited fish released at the surface to float away has been killed just as surely as one put in a box, and the law's phrase — with as little harm as possible — means the descending device rather than the good intention.

AND IF YOU KEEP CATCHING THEM, MOVE. Repeated captures from one mark means you are anchored over an aggregation of an Endangered species.