West coast steenbras

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.

Extraordinarily slow and long-lived: aged to fifty years at a maximum of a metre. Late maturity, extreme longevity and a shore fishery that can reach it are the same combination that has emptied the white steenbras from the Cape shore, and the July 2024 assessment of Endangered reflects it.

Spawns in coastal water with pelagic eggs and larvae, using sheltered inshore and estuarine habitat as nursery ground. As with the white steenbras, the dependence on both functioning nursery habitat and an unfished-enough coast means either can limit the population on its own.

Excavates burrowing invertebrates — sandprawn, mudprawn, worms and small bivalves — from soft ground with the long snout and a strong suction. It works surf gutters and sandbanks, which is what makes it a shore fishery, and the effective baits are the animals it digs for.

Scent and touch over sand in the frequently turbid, plankton-rich water of the Benguela upwelling. Vision matters less than it would for a mid-water hunter, and coloured water is good steenbras water rather than bad.

Moves along the coast and between depths with season and food, with the Namibian surf fishery having a well-established seasonal rhythm driven by water temperature and the movement of the sand. In South African water it is a west-coast fish and thins going south and east.

The headline fish of the Namibian Skeleton Coast surf fishery, one of the great shore fisheries anywhere, and increasingly run on a catch-and-release basis by the operators who work it. In South African water it is a west-coast species at a minimum size and a daily bag limit. Endangered on the July 2024 IUCN assessment.

TREAT IT AS A RELEASE. Endangered, aged to fifty years, and with a bag limit that permits one rather than recommending it.

KEEP IT IN THE WATER. Unhook in the wash rather than carrying it up a beach. Wet everything that touches it, and never lay it on dry sand.

CIRCLE HOOKS ON BAIT AND DO NOT STRIKE. A sand-feeding fish that mouths a bait is deep-hooked easily on a J-hook. Cut the trace on anything hooked deep.

SUPPORT IT UPRIGHT IN MOVING WATER until it swims from your hands. A fish of this age is worth two minutes.