Dassen Island Nature Reserve, South Africa, An island in the Atalntic Ocean, 10km west of Yzerfontein, north of Cape Town (Photo by Hoberman Collection/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The announcement by the government that commercial sardine and anchovy fishing will be temporarily closed around South Africa’s six remaining large African penguin colonies, to improve the availability of food for them, has “come too late” this year for the imperilled seabirds.
Katta Ludynia, research manager at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob), said the interim closures would have very little benefit for the endangered species.
“The breeding season for African penguins is coming to an end, so the closures are coming too late for the majority of breeding penguins this year,” she said. “There have been no other closures this year and closures in 2021 were limited to two islands, Dassen Island and St Croix Island, and these were only seasonal.”
But the decision to stop fishing affects fishers badly. There are concerns that it will affect more than 1 000 sea and land-based fishers, who depend on fishing and fish processing.
Prolonged negotiations
Last week, the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment said the restrictions followed prolonged negotiations with seabird conservation groups and representatives of the pelagic fishing industry.
“While these closures do not represent a consensus position between the two sectors, the department is of the view that this is the best decision we can take at this stage to support penguin populations.”
The closures, which came into effect on 1 September, will run until 23 January 2023, and will be in a “defined area” around the key colonies of Dassen Island, Robben Island, Stony Point and Dyer Island, in the Western Cape, and St Croix and Bird Island in the Eastern Cape. These islands are home to about 88% of breeding pairs along the coastline.
The sardine stock in local waters continues to be at historically low levels, it said. “Competition for food is thought to be one among a set of pressures that are contributing to the decline of the African penguin population. Other pressures include shipping traffic and the associated noise and vibrations, pollution and degradation of suitable nesting habitats through historical removal of guano and coastal commercial and residential developments.”
Meanwhile, environment minister Barbara Creecy is setting up an international panel to review previous scientific work and make further recommendations on closures. “The review will advise the department on the value of fishing limitations for the penguins’ success, as well as the impacts such limitations will have on the fishing industry.”
Hard to find food
African penguins were once South Africa’s most abundant seabird, with more than a million pairs in the 1920s. Now, they are hovering on the brink of extinction, with their population at a record low of about 10 400 pairs.
They feed primarily on sardines and anchovies and their steep decline has been attributed to food shortages caused by shifts in the distribution of these prey species and competition with commercial purse-seine fisheries. This fishing method uses a vertical net “curtain” to surround the school of fish, the bottom of which is drawn together to enclose them.
Decade-long experiment
In 2008, the department of environmental affairs implemented a groundbreaking island closure experiment, alternatively opening and closing four of the largest breeding colonies – Dassen, Robben, St Croix and Bird islands – to the pelagic fishing sector for a radius of 20km. This was to understand whether fishing affected the species.
A consortium of conservation organisations, including BirdLife South Africa, Sanccob, WWF-SA and the Endangered Wildlife Trust said while the experimental closures did not coincide with the penguins’ breeding cycle, they showed significant beneficial effects for penguins, as well as for chick survival, an important factor contributing to population growth.
Closures earlier in the year
Ludynia said African penguins breed in March and April and in August and September in most colonies in South Africa. “In recent years, we have seen less synchronised breeding with birds trying to breed as early as January. We are not 100% [sure] what triggers that behaviour but it is most likely linked to the unpredictability of fish and the low fish availability.”
Unfortunately, birds breeding early in the year often lose their eggs and small chicks during periods of hot weather, she said. “However, African penguins can relay and the main breeding still takes place during the winter months … We needed these closures to be implemented much earlier in the year to allow birds breeding mid-year to successfully raise their chicks … We can only hope that full closures will be implemented in January 2023 to actually benefit African penguins.”
Dr Alistair McInnes, seabird conservation programme manager at BirdLife South Africa, said apart from Bird Island, the interim closures provided limited protection, “given that this is the primary core habitat for breeding birds, ie where most of them find their fish – in many instances this is a relatively small area compared to that available to fishing”.
This is “particularly worrisome” for colonies like St Croix Island, which used to support the largest global population as recently as 2015 but numbers had recently crashed by more than 80%.
“It is now the fourth-largest South African colony and is faced with multiple compounding stressors, which warrants more meaningful protection, given this colony’s current trajectory and status.”
‘Fishers will suffer’
Mohammed Riedau de Maine of the Eastern and Southern Cape Pelagic Association said that hundreds of millions of rand had been invested developing a pelagic fishery, which employs more than 1 000 sea and land-based employees. They are entirely dependent on fishing and processing sardines is a major contributor to the Eastern Cape economy.
“Sardines are best caught as close to the port of call as possible, due to the fragile nature of the fish. They must be offloaded and processed or chilled within at least three hours of being caught, for prime-quality bait and human consumption, but closing the area around St Croix is pushing us to look for fish further afield, with current fuel costs making it financially difficult to survive in this fishery …
“What is very sad to our fishers is that from October to April the large sardine returns to our coast from its migration to Natal, which is our season for fishing during those six months of the year. We have stressed that point continuously to [Creecy’s] Consultative Advisory Forum and the two-man committee that decided to close 73% of our best and most dependent fishing area around St Croix Island.”
‘Sad Christmas’
This Christmas will be a “very sad and sorry one” for the small pelagic fishery in his area, he said, because of the “drastic closure measure having been taken” and the fishermen who sustain their families out of this fishery are “very concerned and worried about the well-being of their families”.
The African penguin has been declining for decades “before we even imagined starting our fishery in our area” in 1992 but the fishing industry “appears to be the target in this case no matter how badly it impacts on the socioeconomics of our fishery”, he said. “Our industry has participated in the experiment since 2011 and, as a result of the experiment, many jobs were lost and processing facilities were closed down …
“Although this is an interim closure, we fear the worst – that the NGOs have smelt victory and will now push for this interim closure to become a permanent closure, bearing in mind that the minster’s decision leaned heavily towards them,” he said.
The South African Pelagic Industry Fishing Association (Sapfia) said it is committed to pursuing management actions “based on the best scientific evidence”. This, it said, applies equally to management measures for the total allowable catch for small pelagic stocks “as it does to actions taken to benefit penguins”.
Because of the concerning decline in penguin numbers, between 2008 and 2021, the association supported and participated in the large-scale island closure experiment “and were then and remain committed” to the outcome of that experiment.
“The results from this experiment indicate that the effect of fishing around penguin breeding colonies is negligible and is not the major driver of the decline in penguin numbers …
“Consistent with this, Sapfia supported a proposal recommended by the Small Pelagic Scientific Working Group in July 2021 to continue with the island closure experiment, while conducting a quantitative assessment of the proportional contribution of all plausible major drivers of the African penguin population decline and preparing defensible cost/ benefit analyses of benefits to penguins of island closures and the socio-economic impact to South Africa, including the cost to rights holders, fishers and factory workers and the benefit from penguin-directed tourism.”
It said it supports the review of the best scientific evidence by the appointment of an international scientific panel, as announced recently by Creecy and her department.
“The results from this review will dictate whether or not island closures are necessary and, if so, to what extent. Consistent with our approach in 2021, and in the spirit of compromise, Sapfia also supports the interim island closures
announced recently by the department, through to the end of 2022, with an understanding that any interim island closures for 2023 will be re-evaluated at the end of 2022.”
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