I have refrained from commenting on this just to see where this was going. After reading this all I would like to put things into perspective.
1) Big white steenbras and big dusky cob that were killed (take note not died, killed) - "woooohooooo well done to the angler". Sies! Shame on you! Your lack of vision, your short-term view based on a historical trend of viewing the ocean as a supermarket will result in the continued bust of a species. Don't tell me there are 1000's of young ones therefore the species is in good shape. Rubbish. It is a well-known fact in ecology that species in peril enter a boom-bust cycle. I don't give a rat's anus that they are still on the take list - we all know they are in trouble and yet we justify our stupidity by using this as an excuse. The truth is that DAFF is so under-funded that they cannot conduct the necessary research to extrapolate the population size. The little money they are allocated goes into determining quotas for the commercial species.
2) Anybody that kills a shark is suddenly a pariah. Why? Because edibles have historically been harvested and are viewed as lower life forms than sharks - the popularity of fishing for them has risen in the last 5 years and all of a sudden they are a treasured resource. Kill one a day. Everybody. And we see what happens to the population.
3) It is no secret that the us shore anglers can annihilate fish stocks. Go look at the pics at the fishing museum in Hermanus and then tell me when last you have 100th of that amount of fish caught on any given day in Hermanus. When I was a laaitie in the 80"s I still caught john brown, wildeperd, dassie and even yellow-belly rock cod at Nooiensbank below Gearing Point. Good luck on even a hottie there now.
4) Go to youtube and check the vids for a comparison between MPA's on Wild Coast vs outside of them. If that does not convince you of the impact we have then we are lost. The impact we as anglers have is huge. Closed areas are a definite need.
5) Commercial exploitation generates income and contributes towards more employment than the recreational sector. Guess who is going to be first on the list if someone has to be cut from the list of authorised users?
6) I eat fish. I like to catch fish. I am responsible - I will catch a hottie for the braai. Or silver cob. Or just legal galjoen. Heck, I even used to take a smallish smooth hound for fried fish - not anymore though as they have become somewhat scarce in my neck of the woods as of late. Or I buy a fresh yellowtail. Be responsible. Don't be part of the of the problem. Be part of the solution.
I am an "environmentalist". I work for an environmental consulting firm where everyday we deal with real world issues - not fuzzy feel good things but real issues: developments, massive engineering projects, game farms, nature reserves etc. Don't confuse real world conservation with psychotic babblings of uninformed people.
And just because someone is interested in the conservation and persistence of species they cannot be called a greenie or bunnyhugger or tree hugger. How about we start calling all the plebs that insist on killing breeding fish "butchers", "barbarians", "idiots" etc? Name-calling is name-calling.
