Conservation Groups Demand Sardine Fishing Pause After Die-Off Along 2,600 km of Coastline

On Friday, 23 October, a letter went to South Africa's Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, David Maynier. It came from four conservation organisations: the Biodiversity Law Centre, The Green Connection, Whale Coast Conservation and the Dyer Island Conservation Trust. They asked him to say who decided that sardine fishing could carry on after a mass die-off, and to suspend directed sardine fishing until a new biomass survey is finished.

The die-off began in late July and has been recorded along roughly 2,600 km of coastline. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment attributes it to pilchard herpesvirus. Sardine are a small forage fish that much of the marine food web depends on. Small-scale fishers use them as bait, and they rely on snoek, yellowtail, geelbek and other predators that feed on sardine. By law, the groups note, government holds sardine in trust for present and future generations.

The department took no action for more than a month after the outbreak. It then capped directed catches at 25% of each right holder's remaining 2026 allowance from 7 September to 2 October, and at 33% from 3 to 30 October. The catch limit that purportedly reduced the October allowance lapsed on 30 October.

The underlying Total Allowable Catch of 51,800 tonnes was recommended in April, based on a biomass survey done before the outbreak. The department says the full impact will only be understood after its next survey. But the tender for the survey vessel closed only on 23 October, so the groups say a survey before the end of the year, as the department has suggested, looks unlikely. In their view, fishing is therefore continuing on a number that may describe a population significantly depleted since it was calculated. They argue this contravenes the precautionary approach required by South African law, which does not make action conditional on cost-effectiveness and requires attention to ecosystem integrity and the livelihoods that depend on it.

Tabitha Paine, senior attorney in the Biodiversity Law Centre's Oceans programme, said sardine have died along some 2,600 km of coast and that no one, the department included, knows how many remain. She noted that fishing continued under a pre-die-off limit and that the catch limit was raised in October. Her reasoning was about asymmetry: if fishing pauses and the stock proves healthy, the fish can be caught later; if fishing continues and the stock has collapsed, the harm cannot be undone for sardine, for the penguins and snoek that depend on them, or for the small-scale fishers who depend on snoek. She added that the public and affected fishers have not been told who made the decisions or on what basis.

The letter asks the minister to disclose every decision taken since the die-off began, who took it, under which legal provision and for what reasons, and to publish future decisions with their reasons.

Neville van Rooy, outreach ambassador at The Green Connection, warned that fishing on without knowing the damage risks adding pressure to an already uncertain population. For small-scale fishers, he said, this concerns livelihoods, food security and the future of coastal communities, and those people could pay the price.

Fishers themselves describe a sea already changing. Priscilla Abrahams, a vlekker from St Helena Bay, said snoek stomachs used to contain anchovy but now mostly hold baby hake. Walter Steenkamp, a small-scale fisher with the Aukotowa Fisheries Primary Co-operative in Port Nolloth, Northern Cape, said there is far less snoek than when he was young and asked that communities not be left out of decisions about their children's future.

The minister's response on disclosure is still pending, and the survey's timing remains the key unknown.