EDITORIAL

BYE, BYE SHELL — FOR NOW

By Erwin Bursik

SHELL’S offshore seismic blasting off the Wild Coast has, for now, come to a halt with the survey vessel having moved to new pastures. I, like many other South African anglers, am very grateful to the numerous activists, organisations and ordinary citizens who worked so hard to have the sonar survey stopped. We offer our huge thanks for your efforts. Although I do not pretend to know anything about the science behind the effects of this Erwin Bursik sonar blasting, I was once exposed to the after-Publisher math of a survey of this nature. That one was carried out off the northern Moçambique coast between Pemba in the north and Nacala in the south.

A few of us were fortunate to spend a week aboard a sportfisher in this prime fishing area. It should have been the trip of a lifetime, but as it turned out minimal fish were caught. When we asked the local fishermen why they were beach-bound during the stretch of great weather conditions, the “head honcho” pointed with a wave of his hand to the horizon and, in very broken English, said: “When lights out there, no fish — when no lights, lots of fish.”

We concurred that there were no fish around. In truth, if memory serves me correctly, we only caught two small GTs during our five-day live-aboard trip.

A well-known and respected diver who was with us spent over two hours snorkelling and diving over an area that the skipper called his private pantry. Usually the area never failed to produce a lot of gamefish, but our mate who traversed the entire reef declared that in two hours he had only seen two rat ’cuda. The reef was dead.

At the time there was a ship in the area undertaking a seismic survey.

A week or two later the captain reported incredible catches over this same reef and admitted that the sonar vessel had moved away up north of Pemba.

I know I’m sticking my neck out, but this isolated experience convinced me that sonar activity in an area most certainly affects the fish. What the residual effects are of this blasting is open to debate.

In fairness, during my Moçambique experience, the sonar vessel was trolling a pattern from not more than five nautical miles off the coast, to way out to sea and beyond the horizon.

The fact that the predatory gamefish — and presumably the baitfish — returned in less than two weeks does, to my mind, raise some queries about the lasting effects of a sonar survey off the coast.

Some research has been done, but there seems to be no definitive “yes” or “no” on whether these surveys are a danger to marine mammals and fish. Given the intensity of offshore sonar searching for oil that has been undertaken in recent decades, one would think that our scientific community, especially the marine scientists would by now have come up with concrete facts as to the long-term effect this activity has on the fishery concerned.

I, for one, would like someone to shine a light on all of the opposing arguments and cut to the chase to give a definitive answer on whether offshore sonar blasting has a long-term effect on our fish resources in, say, the zero to 300 fathom waters.

Until I see that, the jury is still out.

On a happier note, our “Where to Fish” series has been incredibly popular with readers and although we don’t have one in this issue, it will be starting up again in the May/June 2022 issue where we will be covering the Border region.

Till the next tide

Erwin Bursik