Shocking discovery on the Orange River

[Chris Shelton]

Hey all. I'm distressed! I just paid a visit to the yellowfish hatchery below the Gariep dam wall on the Orange River and was shocked to find that construction is already under way for a subsistence fish farming plant right next to the river! Thousands of Chinese have moved into the area and are involved in building the multi million dollar facility that will become the processing plant for imported blue carp that will be farmed at the hatchery! How could this have been allowed to go ahead? Apart from tons of fish efluent that will be discharged into the river, there is a very real risk that these Blue carp will ultimately find their way into the Orange River and will eventually completely take over in all the tribs and all the way down to the sea! There must be something we as concerned members of the public and custodians of our rivers can do to stop this from continuing! Was an impact study ever conducted? Looks like nothing but another money making thing to further line the already over feathered nest of yet another corrupt government official! I'm disgusted!

[Korrie]

For something like this to happen, I would imagine that and EIA would have to be done, and all the IAP, to have an input.

As you said, maybe another one of those cases, where someone had a backhand that is greased with lots of dollars

[NeilRowe]

Diet carp and Spanish barbel. Eesh.

[nkula_nkula]

Interesting... Chris I see you back to maintain your spot as top poster!

Is there no way they can make it conditional on rearing "triploid" carp that cannot reproduce. I know all the rainbows that are reared in Katse dam in the nets are triploids to stop escapee fish from spawning and taking over the dam.

Hey all. I'm distressed! I just paid a visit to the yellowfish hatchery below the Gariep dam wall on the Orange River and was shocked to find that construction is already under way for a subsistence fish farming plant right next to the river! Thousands of Chinese have moved into the area and are involved in building the multi million dollar facility that will become the processing plant for imported blue carp that will be farmed at the hatchery! How could this have been allowed to go ahead? Apart from tons of fish efluent that will be discharged into the river, there is a very real risk that these Blue carp will ultimately find their way into the Orange River and will eventually completely take over in all the tribs and all the way down to the sea! There must be something we as concerned members of the public and custodians of our rivers can do to stop this from continuing! Was an impact study ever conducted? Looks like nothing but another money making thing to further line the already over feathered nest of yet another corrupt government official! I'm disgusted!

[core fly]

I know Pierre Devilliers works for cape nature now but he was very involoved in that farm at gariep.Maybe if someone in C.T has contact with him,like Dean Impson or the like they could get some info about this.Pierre is also the chairman of the (orange/vaal river management an consevation aassociation)or something like that.We knew(from the local papers) that the chinese paid mega bucks for the site,but from what we heard was that they were going to use barbel.It is apparently becomming very popular in the use of sushi in their country.I will take this up with a few guys i know and hear what they say and Know.If they bringing alien species here that should never be allowed.lets keep this thread alive and updated,then see what we can do about it.

[Stephen Louw]

The biodiversity act is extraordinarily hard to get around, so this is surprising if true. I doubt there is a commercial market for SA catfish either, and as far as I know no one has got permission to farm the US Channel Catfish or any of the varieties farmed successfully in Asia. The Ocean Basket import a lot of catfish, which they sell as Basa in their SA chain.

[Korrie]

a very large portion of fish sold at the "fish and chips shops" in Gauteng is Barbel.

[Gerrit Viljoen]

a very large portion of fish sold at the "fish and chips shops" in Gauteng is Barbel.

Give that man a bells...another one!

[Stephen Louw]

a very large portion of fish sold at the "fish and chips shops" in Gauteng is Barbel.

Korrie this is not really true. The SA catfish industry has never taken off and according to the 2009 Aquaculture Benchmarking Survey (p.52) there is presently only one producer actively selling fish, entirely to the African immigrant community in Gauteng, mostly to persons from the DRC, Ghana and Nigeria where there is an extant catfish market.

The catfish sold in Ocean Basket is entirely imported.

[Chris Shelton]

I had a word with the Deputy Director of Aquaculture and he says the present facility is about to be taken over by The Dept of Agriculture. This alone is disturbing! Currently the yellowfish hatchery has come to a stand-still with only one pond still in operation. I've applied to take this last batch of 1500 fingerlings over to stock into a few spring fed dams in the area, but this is possibly the last batch of yellows that the hatchery will be rearing.