White steenbras

Fishing declines are usually anecdotes. This one is a series of numbers, and they are worth reading in order.

IN THE 1960s the white steenbras contributed about THIRTY PER CENT by mass of the annual angler catch in the south-western Cape shore fishery.

BY 1990–91 that was EIGHT PER CENT.

BY 1994–96 it was 0.6 PER CENT.

AND THE CATCH RATE — fish per angler per hour, which is the measure that strips out how many people are fishing — has fallen by ABOUT NINETY PER CENT SINCE THE MID-1970s.

THE CAUSES ARE NOT MYSTERIOUS AND ARE NOT ALL ANGLING. Beach-seine netting in False Bay is named repeatedly in the literature as a principal driver; estuarine nursery habitat has been degraded by abstraction, mouth closure and development; and the species' own biology — slow growth, late maturity, three years as an estuarine juvenile — means it recovers slowly from any of it.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR SOMEBODY FISHING TODAY is that the fish is still there, still catchable, and still the same animal it was; there are simply far fewer of them and they are drawn from a population that cannot absorb much. The IUCN assessed it as Endangered on 11 July 2024. That is the context for the release advice on this page, and the reason it is written as advice rather than as a rule: the rule permits one fish, and the fish would rather you did not.

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, long-lived and late-maturing, with juveniles obligatorily resident in estuaries for up to three years before recruiting to the coast. The combination is the standard signature of a species that a fishery removes faster than it replaces itself, and the catch history is what that looks like from the beach: thirty per cent of the south-western Cape shore catch by mass in the 1960s, under one per cent by the mid-1990s.

Spawns at sea, with the larvae and post-larvae recruiting into estuaries where the juveniles remain for their first years. That dependence means the species needs both a functioning estuary and an unfished-enough coast, and the loss of either is sufficient on its own — which is why estuary mouth closure, freshwater abstraction and coastal netting all appear in the assessments alongside angling pressure.

Excavates burrowing invertebrates — sandprawn above all, with mudprawn, bloodworm and small bivalves — from soft ground, using the long snout to dig and a strong suction to lift prey out of the sand. It works the same way in an estuary channel and in a surf gutter, and a bait that sits still on clean sand near a gutter edge is being presented the way the fish naturally finds food.

Scent and touch, working over sand in water that is frequently sediment-laden. Vision matters less than it does for a mid-water predator, and the fish is notably unbothered by turbid water — a churned surf after a blow is traditionally regarded as good steenbras water rather than bad.

Moves between estuaries and the open coast with size and season, with adults in the surf zone and over shallow sand and juveniles inside the estuaries. The traditional Cape shore season is the cooler months, though the fishery is now thin enough that seasonality is harder to read from catches than it once was.

Historically one of the premier South African shore species and one of the most heavily targeted in the recreational, subsistence and spear fisheries. It is now Endangered on the IUCN Red List as assessed in July 2024 and SASSI red, and the practical position is that a shore angler who wants to catch one should expect to release it. The legal position is a minimum size and a daily bag limit.

TREAT EVERY ONE AS A RELEASE. This is an Endangered species whose recreational catch rate has fallen by about ninety per cent, and the daily bag limit is a ceiling rather than an entitlement.

KEEP IT IN THE WATER IF YOU CAN. Unhook a shore fish in the wash rather than carrying it up the beach. If it must come out, support the belly, keep it horizontal and keep it brief.

WET EVERYTHING THAT TOUCHES IT — hands, sand-free mat, net mesh. Dry sand on a fish's flank strips the mucus coat, and a beach is the worst surface a fish can be put on.

USE A CIRCLE HOOK ON BAIT AND DO NOT STRIKE. A sand-feeding fish that mouths a bait is easy to hook deep on a J-hook, and deep-hooking is what turns a released fish into a dead one. If it is hooked deep, cut the trace at the hook rather than retrieving it.

AND MOVE ON FROM AN AGGREGATION. The fish schools; catching several from one gutter is catching several from one small population.