Explosion of sea life

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will101

Senior Member
There is currently a mass of krill or shrimp or whatever you might call it in the water. The whales, dolphins etc are quite busy. We managed to get a few fish in the foul wind yesterday (hottentot and jacobever) and they were literally stuffed with these little sea creatures. What with all the baitfish and shrimp / krill in the water it surely paints a good picture regarding the health of our ocean?

These little animals are white in color with black speck eyes, about 5mm long. The krill I have seen previously were basically transparent but the same size. They can even be found washed out on the beach at Kommetjie. Any experts care to give us some more info please?

Did anyone have any offshore success over the weekend? I saw one charter boat leave on an inshore trip yesterday - will try and gather more info.
 
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Tuna fish

Senior Member
I think its Krill Noordhoek beach was covered with them on Saturday. Sterkies were working the anchovies in the surf like no tomorrow ! Hopefully this a good sign of things to come.
 
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AndriesH

Sealiner
I saw a National Geographic program a while ago where these occurances were monitored off the Namibian coast.

The message was the opposite of good: it was bad.
The krill form the bottom of the food chain and the base diet for most fish species that we are familiar with.
With NO sardines around, noa baitfish able to eat the krill, you end up with a potential disaster as the krill have nowhere to go and just die and pollute. This results in all sort of problems like red tides due to less oxygen in the water etc.

This is a sign of overfishing by the big fishing fleets.
 
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will101

Senior Member
Good point - hopefully it has a positive knock-on effect though in years to come. Still good to see so much activity in the ocean. Actually the whales are a bit of a menace at the moment, one really has to keep a sharp lookout as they are all over the place.
 
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Muffin Man

Senior Member
Some of the tail we have been catching over the past 2 weeks on the West Coast have been dik with this and a few juvenile maasbunkers imbetween. Cheers Paul (MM)
 
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benniejordaan

Sealiner
Something I have noticed is the Mackeys are also huge and plentiful. Could this be because they are now living longer due to lack of predation commbined with the extra food source around?
 
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AndriesH

Sealiner
benniejordaan wrote:
Something I have noticed is the Mackeys are also huge and plentiful. Could this be because they are now living longer due to lack of predation commbined with the extra food source around?
Click to expand...
That is stunning news !!!
The plentifull availability of food that lives longer results in the downline increased production in ROE in the bigger species, that will connect up to Will101 thinking process of increased fish stocks in a few years to come.

If the industry doesn't start targeting juveniles it certainly would help to restore the balance between food and fish in the the ocean.
 
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