Fishing Management at Zandvlei...

[BuzzLiteBeer]

Zandvlei Trust newsletter extract.....

Are you a fisherman and will you share some of your information for management purposes? Please contact ....

Gavin Lawson : Chairperson Zandvlei Trust
Phone 021 705-5224
email glawson@xsinet.co.za

OR

Cassandra Sheasby : Manager, Zandvlei Estuary Nature Reserve
Phone 021 701-7542
cassandra.sheasby@capetown.gov.za

Come on guys make some input.....

This is an opportunity for Flytalk to get involved with Zandvlei Fishing Management issues....

[chris williams]

Exactly, this is what I as a humble Gautie have been suggesting for the past few months! Maybe add this to the oft-repeated pleas/threads! Sincerely, good luck with this!

[rols]

buzz
sorry i might be having a blonde moment here.... what are they asking for? "are you a fisherman and will you share some info for management purposes", managing the fishing? or the k&k that goes on around the place and then gets thrown in the water...

[Chris Shelton]

Wont be long and one would need special permits to fish the vlei. How else can they manage the fishing?

[dpammenter]

Wont be long and one would need special permits to fish the vlei. How else can they manage the fishing?

maybe that's not such a bad idea - you just need someone to go round checking all the anglers have their permits

?

[harry]

Reading between the lines, it appears that the big problem at Zandvlei is water quality, and not necessarily the impact of fishing. I may be wrong, but it is fair to assume that the fishing will improve if water quality can be improved. The protection and improvement of a fishing resource is something that that needs public (and noisy) support. I'd say go for it.

[BuzzLiteBeer]

buzz
sorry i might be having a blonde moment here.... what are they asking for? "are you a fisherman and will you share some info for management purposes", managing the fishing? or the k&k that goes on around the place and then gets thrown in the water...

Hi Rols.

I get the impression it would involve things like catch returns and illegal fishing activity. The contact persons mentioned are also involved with pollution control. I will mail Gavin Lawson and find out.

[kyle-J]

I have mailed and received a response. They are still in the process of setting up a tagging project, they anticipate that it will form part of the national catch reg. who will then report to the Sandvlei trust. I have requested they contact me once they have finalised the system.

They have requested in the intermin that all barble and carp caught are killed and removed from site.

It would appear that their major concern is water quality to prevent an occurance like Rietvlei!

[swsmith]

were does one dump your fish...i wouldnt even give those fish to our workers to eat...for fear of them landing up in hospital...

as for managing the marina...i dont mean to be negative but we cant even police the beaches properly...the damage at the marina is done by the guys who fish live bait and take the leeries out.

im keen to assist where i can...kyle keep me informed bud

[BuzzLiteBeer]

Hi Rols.

I get the impression it would involve things like catch returns and illegal fishing activity. The contact persons mentioned are also involved with pollution control. I will mail Gavin Lawson and find out.

FEEDBACK FROM GAVIN LAWSON
We would like to know what species are being caught, condition, maybe sex if that is possible, size or weight, time of day caught, weather conditions, is the mouth of the vlei open or closed.
The idea is to try and establish how healthy the systemis as a whole to determine how conditons in the vlei should be managed. It is a very complex place to manage, for flood conditions, the salinity levels are manipulated to let as much sea water into the vlei as possible. From the other end we have silt carried in the bucket loads by runoff from the catchment. We have had sewerage spills into the rivers leading into the vlei. There have been other toxic and hassardous spills into the stormwater systems which land up in Zandvlei. It is complex, and a very large area to manage with too few people.

This may give you some ideas, maybe you have other suggestions.

The data I would like to capture and publish on the web site as a long term data storage base - the "local knowledge base" so that it can be used for deducing trends and forecasts.
An example - the data we have for daily, monthly and annual rainfall can estimate the salinity levels to a 50% accuracy without taking any salinity readings. We have 9 years of records. It is under ZIMP Rainfall on the website.

We will call a general meeting for all interested fishermen, to discuss the issue and any others arising regarding fishing at Zandvlei. The Fresh water anglers will be invited as well.
Cheers,
Gavin.

FROM CASSY SHEASBY : CNC
Thank you for your email, it is wonderful to see so many people wanting to get involved in fish tagging here. We are busy working towards a fish tagging project that will be run predominantly by the fisherman and the data will be transferred to us at Zandvlei. We have managed to get some tags, however I personally do not know much about fish tagging and it will have to be closely monitored to ensure the health of the fish and as few fatalities as possible. I am still investigating this in amongst many other projects. It is so good to know that you are still catching fish of a reasonable size! I recently received an email from a resident who reported that there were simply no more fish in the system. Our last fish trek however still yielded many fish but mostly harders.

The carp and barble as you know are alien invasive species and we are working towards an eradication programme of these species. Although we will never get rid of them completely, they do have a significant impact on indigenous fish stocks and I encourage fisherman to remove carp and barble from the system, kill them and remove them from site. I know that some fishermen sell these fish to people in the surrounding communities for small sums of money which is illegal. The catch and release of indigenous fish is of utmost importance in this estuary as it is the only functional one left on the False Bay coastline!

I am currently starting to work on an action plan to improve the water quality of the water entering the system from the stormwater canals in the surrounding suburbs because this is going to be the downfall of this estuary on a long term scale. It took 30 years of pollutants entering Rietvlei, but only one day of favourable weather conditions for 80 tons of fish to die overnight.it is very much my priority to make sure that it doesn't happen here too. The blind ending canals in Marina da Gama don't help this goal as they are acting as nutrient traps which are not flushed when the tidal interchange of water occurs during mouth opening of the estuary and if the problem arises, it is going to start there. We are working on getting those canals cleared of the rotting debris.

I will be contacting a freshwater specialist next week to find out more about the fish tagging and as soon as I have something solid to work with I will let you know. We will hopefully get this off the ground within the next few months as there is a lot of interest from many fishing groups.

Thanks again for your interest, please don't hesitate to contact me with any other questions.