9~10 April 16
Area;
One of the 2 km stretches of coastline will be inside the MPA and the other 2 km stretch will be about 17 km to the west, outside the MPA, just west of Gerickes Point. The two areas were selected due to similarity in habitat, i.e. sandy beaches interspersed by exposed areas of aeolianite rock platforms, with subtidal reefs interspersed by sandy patches leaving a mosaic of reef in the surf zone. The reefs, and to a lesser extent, the beaches, are uncovered and recovered with sand due to wind and wave forces.
A trained team of volunteer anglers will annually undertake eight, 2 day angling outings to Goukamma MPA and the adjacent area west of Gerickes Point. This is one, two day outing every month and a half which will take place over a weekend. These dates will be set in advance, and cannot be changed, regardless of weather or any other circumstance. See Appendix 1. If sufficient data, i.e. catches, is not gathered during the first year, the amount of outings may need to be increased, or may be decreased.
During each of the eight trips the fishing will be conducted by eight anglers in the two 2 km chosen areas. These 2 km areas will be marked off at 100 m intervals with numbered poles, placed with the aid of a GPS. Four anglers will fish in one area and 4 in the other on the first day, and the teams will swap areas for the second day (pers. comm. Mann). The team of anglers will be kept the same as much as possible, but may have to be supplemented from a longer list of trained anglers depending on angler availability (pers. comm. Mann). No angler swops may occur on a specific trip. Experienced anglers and taggers (Appendix 3) will mostly be used in the project, but from time-to-time new taggers will be brought in for training.
All anglers will use standardised rock and surf gear and barbless hooks only (Mann pers. comm.). This can be achieved by flattening the barbs on barbed hooks with a pliers. The use of circle hooks is encouraged, but they are not successful for certain species (Mann, pers. comm.). All fish caught are promptly covered with a wet cloth, measured on specially designed fish-tagging stretchers and returned to the water as fast as possible with as little harm done as possible. Priority species greater than 30 cm total length will be tagged with plastic dart tags provided by the Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI). Galjoen may be tagged from greater than 25 cm total length. See Appendix 2 for a list of the expected priority species.
Measurements taken of the fish must be correct to the nearest millimeter (mm). All fish are measured to fork length (FL), except Kob, Belman and Yellow-belly Rockcod which are measured to total length (TL). Sharks which have a forked tail are measured from the nose to the point where the tail meets the body. This is called pre-caudal length (PCL). Sharks which do not have a forked tail are measured at TL. Rays and skates are measured to the widest point of their “wing-spanâ€, known as disc width (DW).
The catch and effort data and tagging information will be recorded by each individual angler on site on a daily basis. Thereafter it will be entered onto a computer database for later analysis. Daily information which is necessary for anglers to record is angler name, team, date, start time and end time. When a fish is caught the following info is recorded: species, fork length, hook size and type, time of catch and beach (locality) code. Lost tackle is also recorded, as well as daily wind speed and Two 4x4 vehicles will be used to drive the anglers into the reserve and adjacent area to the selected fishing sites. Anglers should be dropped off at one point and left for the day to walk through the sites, as this increases the chances of effort being spread throughout the site (Mann, pers. comm.).
Equal amounts of time will be spent fishing in the two study sites, enabling a direct comparison of fish catches between areas. Fishing effort will be spread across each of the two study sites. This will be achieved by setting certain rules. The first rule is that anglers may spend a maximum of two hours at one spot, after two hours they have to move to a new spot a minimum distance of 100 m away (Mann pers. comm.). There is also a minimum time of 15 minutes that an angler must remain on one spot before moving on. Each spot (a minimum of 100m from the next) may only be fished once per day.
At each site, each day, two of the four anglers will be devoted to targeting big fish, and the other two to small fish for the whole day (Swart & Spencer pers. comm.). Big fish anglers will be issued with 1 kg Sardines and 1 large chokka per day. Big fish anglers may also bring their own Red Rock Crabs, Bloodworm and Octopus. Siffies may also be used in the future when we have secured a research permit to harvest them. Big fish anglers may use 5’0’’ hooks or 8’0’’ hooks for sharks. Small fish anglers will be issued I kg Red Bait and 20 White Mussels. Small fish anglers may also bring their own Bloodworm and Wonderworm. Small fish anglers may use 1’0’’ hooks only. No other hooks or bait may be brought with or used. Anglers may take as many rods as they wish for a day’s fishing, but they may only use one at a time, i.e. each angler may have only one line in the water at any time.
:fishn
::hippy1:
