Category: Report

The Sardine News on TikTok

The Sardine News on TikTok: yep, we made the uploads and we were absolutely devoured by the TikTok audience. We got over 50 000 video views in the first few days.

For perspective – it takes a helluva lot of effort for us to get even 10 000 views on YouTube in a month.

Resting on these laurels proved to be our undoing, however. We are now scraping by on 1000 to 2000 views per day. From 20 000 – our best 24 hours in that honeymoon week on TikTok.

The content

Was a series of shorts, or reels – call them what you like, but they are short form and vertical (portrait) videos. Very short, like 3 seconds up to a minute or so.

Click right HERE to check out our TikTok videos.

Format

Luckily when sometimes my cameras roll around on the bottom, the frame usually ends up being at 45 degrees so. Which fits quite ok into the vertical video format we are forced to work with here.

“A vertical video is made in portrait mode and has a 9:16 aspect ratio. Vertical videos are taller in height than they are in width, the ideal dimensions being 1080×1920 pixels.”

Google

Otherwise, this format is the salvation of that huge swathe of people who started filming videos when they first got a smartphone. Vertically! I was running around trying to stop everybody from doing this. As a video editor, I was appalled. How was this gonna work?

Most of my stuff by far is in landscape and it will stay that way. This was really an experimental foray into TikTok and short-form vertical video.

But let’s not forget – that we hold our sacred little phones in the vertical orientation all day long too.

Landscape Thumbnails…

Versus the portrait format below.

Production

Was actually hell in this case. I am a die-hard Premiere user. And I have an age-old installation which I am currently operating with. Very stable. But it doesn’t know about TikTok or Instagram. No presets.

Plus, most of my material is shot in landscape mode (horizontal).

And so, I just made the videos on their side. Guaranteeing resolution and maximum quality. And the joys of laying out a scene in Premiere. Colour correction. Audio. And dressing up with logos, titles, animations and things. Albeit my neck got a little uncomfortable but they are really short videos anyway.

Then they had to go for a joyride through the built-in video editor that comes with Windows 10 these days. Tedious and time-consuming to rotate and then render each video into the vertical video format. But shaving off two-thirds of the bulk of each file. Leaving me with tiny little uploads of between 5 and 50mb.

A reasonable workflow that can be lived with. There are so many options out there these days. Even through a browser or on your phone, video editing has become really easy and accessible.

Momentum

By uploading in two batches of a dozen or so in each, we seemed to have fallen off the algorithm bus. I do believe that had I kept uploading – even ones and twos, we would have stayed on that magnificent trajectory.

Batching is the only way to stay ahead of yourself. It takes a lot of work and slogging but once you are sitting on a bunch, like 20 or 30, man-oh-man can they work for you. And for a very long time.

Shorts on YouTube

So I uploaded the series to YouTube and included the hashtag #shorts in each one. Some did ok – 2000 odd views straight away. And then like all YouTube videos, they just flat-lined. No pulse.

I have zero faith in the YouTube algorithm because: I go two nice marlin clips from Duarte at FishBazaruto. Different fish but very similar in every other regard. Slightly sensationalist titles like HUGE or MASSIVE marlin. The one got 2000 views. The other got 50.

So now what?

YouTube is such a disaster area right now. Plus, shorts on YouTube are hardly monetizable. For that 2000-view video, had I monetised, would have paid like a dollar.

Worth it?

Is it worth that hassle? Well that opening week on TikTok ramped my exposure for sure. I felt it across all the other platforms that following week.

Plus, we are stuck with vertical video and short-form content. Just look at anything being snapped with a cellphone these days and you will see a vertical-oriented phone clicking away.

See you on Instagram next…will upload the series there starting today. Will use their scheduling tool to pop one per every 6 hours and let’s see what happens.

The Sardine News can help you digitise your business. Taking processes online and onto cellphones, means you have a powerful internal company network at your fingers (IPN – Internal Private Network). Reaching to all your resources everywhere. Instantly. POS. Stock. Customers. Bookings. Transactions. Marketing. Accounts. Reports. Tasks. Communications.

Get in touch with Sean on +27793269671 or email umzimkulu@gmail.com.

eThekweni issues warning about it’s own incompetence

eThekweni issues warning about it’s own incompetence: with so much irony, that it almost sounds like they are actually doing their job by warning us of the toxic water conditions that they themselves have created.

Water management

Is the most basic and the most important duty that a government or municipality has the honour of carrying through for its people. Without clean water, we are doomed.

• bathing, surfing and diving will be too dangerous due to the water borne ecoli
• fish will die in the estuaries which are already down to 1%. The knock-on effect will reach the farthest reaches of our local reef and marine ecosystem
• we will have to boil tap water before we use it for anything
• we will have to buy water from the corporates who probably have a hand in this pollution

Except, oh shit! This has already all happened!

Fish kills at Isipingo and Umgeni Estuaries

These two estuaries have both got the potential to be valid contributors to the KZN estuary system that we have systematically destroyed over the last hundred years. By farming the land to shreds. For cash crops and livestock. Using dodgy fertilisers and pesticides pushed to these profiteering farmers by Monsanto and friends like a sophisticated drug dealing network.

And now by eThekweni Municipality totally failing it’s water management mandate, we have fish kills. With their knockon effects.

Isipingo had the same scene last year. It also made the news. This year was no different in calamity. SO many gorgeous fish.

But the Umgeni fish kill really broke me down. That was a large percentage of KZN’s estuary fish all killed right there. Rare and protected species. There were little baby kingfish in there. So many beautiful little koblets. And the spotted grunter – heartbreaking as they could be seen in the video – gasping for breath with their heads out of the water trying to breath some oxygen in.

You see, the sewage and pollution lies on the bottom with all the other oxygen destroying stuff. The top level of water has the oxygen that the fishies can survive in. The dry season kicks in. Water extraction upriver goes on unchecked for both industry and farming. The water stops flowing. The mouth silts up and starts to close as the east winds start up for spring. The tide hardly makes a difference and is restricted to the lower reaches. The weather changes for the warmer or the wind blows extra hard and the top layer is evaporated. The bottom layer becomes the top and the fish die of suffocation.

Every time. Over and over. Except this time a huge chunk of KZN’s fish nursery stock were murdered in one fell swoop.

Don’t drink the water!

If you live in Durban – your drinking water also comes from the Umgeni sometimes, best you be very careful. The same thing happens down here in the UGU warzone. Except here they blame it on easily managed salt regression (just turn the pumps off a few hours), in the Umzimkulu River. And plan to build a berm blocking the last free-flowing river left in KZN.

These are the symptoms you may suffer if you ingest contaminated water:

Signs/Symptoms of Drinking Contaminated Water

• Gastrointestinal Problems.
• Diarrhea.
• Nausea.
• Intestinal or Stomach Cramping.
• Intestinal or Stomach Aches and Pains.
• Dehydration.
• Death.

Don’t go in the water

Yip, that happened too now, bathing is banned at most Durban beaches as the toxic soup gets distributed by wind, waves and currents that pull in ALL directions.

“?? ETHEKWINI NEWSFLASH
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
22 AUGUST 2022

CITY CLOSES SOME BEACHES DUE TO HIGH E-COLI LEVELS

The public is informed that the City has taken the decision to close some beaches with immediate effect due to high levels of E-coli in the water.

This decision is as a consequence of recent water testing results which confirmed high levels of E-coli.

All water activities such as swimming, surfing, fishing, bathing, canoeing, and other activities taking place at City beaches are therefore prohibited. Beachgoers are urged to heed this warning as disregarding it could result in outbreaks of waterborne diseases.

Closed beaches include Westbrook, uMhlanga Main, uMdloti, Casuarina, eThekwini Beach, Laguna Seasonal Beach, Ansteys Beach, Brighton Beach, Isiphingo Beach, Reunion Beach, Warner Beach, Amanzimtoti Main Beach, and Pipeline Beach.

Residents can still enjoy other activities along the beach that do not require them to come into contact with sea water.

Lifeguards and law enforcement officers will be on site to monitor the beaches to ensure the public adheres to the closures.

The public will be notified when the beaches are deemed safe to utilise.

ENDS
Issued by the eThekwini Municipality’s Communications Unit. For media enquiries contact Municipality’s Spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela on 060 966 4220″

It really sounds like they are proud of the warning they have just submitted to the very people they are meant to be protected from themselves.

Here’s the thing

A few days before all of this fish murder catstrophe, the following story went around ,about a poor guy with a little gill net, getting arrested. At the pump station in the Umgeni Estuary…

REPORT

Good afternoon sir.

This morning SAR members were called out to Umgeni River for reported gillnetting. Based on information and active communication with the informant/complainant we were able to identify
3 suspects who were in possession of home made craft two nets, and five fish.

We gave chase. The suspects fled into the bush and into the water.

They abandoned about 500m of gillnetting with their catch and craft. The nets were 4 cm square with 9 cm stretch and estimated to be about 500m long in total.

The fish were taken to Ushaka specialists for identification and stats.

The fish that were abandoned were;

5 Mozambican Tiliapa
230mm female
230mm female
225mm female
260mm male
300mm male
1 Flat head mullet
390 mm

In the absence of suspects all abandoned equipment was distroyed as saps would not recieve perishables in the Saps 13 register.

Ok, so this subsistence fisher taking a few mullet and tilapia – both species unrestricted and easy to target specifically got chased and almost arrested. And the eThekweni Municipality? They kill thousands upon thousands of fish in one go. Over and over again. And is even ONE person accused of ANY crime?

What we can’t see dead in the water is the real problem. All the millions of larvae and fry. Tiny beautiful animals taken at childbirth.

Habitat destruction.

eThekweni’s response

Is the same horse shit all over again. We just heard their very own David Wilson who is somehow responsible for making up excuses:

• somebody poured something very poisonous into a manhole or something
• it was not ecoli levels that caused the fish to suffocate in tepid still water
• the Umgeni is a fast-flowing river that is tidal
• it is normal for an entire treatment plant to go offline for months like at current. Since April untreated raw sewage has been going into the Umgeni. It is because of the 100 year flood
• informal settlements discharge straight into the river (this is the one true statement in this list)
• Umgeni discharge water goes north and so cannot affect Durban’s main beaches
• the Umgeni will heal itself

Yip. I just heard all that ignorance on the radio right now. Whilst also admitting that their treatment plant cannot be fixed due to a complete lack of security and management. The treatment plant was electrified and looted by vandals so nobody could work there?! Who makes this shit up? Or why not just call the cops?

This is why we have fish kills. Levels of ignorance this high at government level.

Final Comment

Goes out to all those so-called conservationists and sport anglers who incessantly moan and complain about there being no fish in the Umgeni Estuary.

Well.

You are totally wrong. Look at those fish in the pics and videos! That you should have been protecting from the evil and destructive clutches of the eThekweni Municipality.

That IS your job.

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It’s definitely NOT a guarantee anymore but we do have clean water in the Umzimkulu Estuary at the moment. We also have cool riverfront accommodation and plenty of fishing and other activities on the go. You can even go surfing.

Who gonna get the 1st couta this 2022/23 season?

Who gonna get the 1st couta this 2022/23 season?

2021/22

Last year the spearos won this race by a nautical mile. Gavin Nell shot this fish way early. So early. October early! Out on the shoal in some clean and warm conditions.

First couta of 2021/22 Season

2020/21

The year before went to the kayakers. Two fish were caught on the very same day. On the very same outing. In November! The first fish in a hatch was by Jonno Gouws. A few moments later, Justin Campbell got an even bigger one. They both paddled their fish in at Winkle with the wind blowing them south at speed.

Enjoy the video with authentic sound byte from the kayak…

Quick gallery of that wondrous day…back on the beach!

2019/20

We seem to have missed this year’s first couta.

2018/19

We had thought we caught the first couta this season on the Niteshift. But it turned out someone else had gotten one a few days before. Please Like and Subscribe and ring that stupid little YouTube bell icon!

You can get to the channel here – TSN.

Back to the present

So ok, we are good to go down here on the all-of-a-sudden sunny KZN South Coast. Spring has most definitely shown some interest. The fishing is as good as it gets.

We have the Umzimkulu Estuary here in a pristine state as the big tides recently have allowed the salt water to come right in and flush the place right out. You can see the full picture by watching the video in this post. Shot a week ago, it is extremely revealing.

The garrick and kob have arrived.

We have accommodation options at Umzimkulu Marina. We run charters and all sorts of adventures at Umzimkulu Adrenalin.

And you can follow it all on The Sardine News!

Grunter Alley ambush by Goby One Kanobi

Grunter Alley ambush by Goby One Kanobi: choose the right days in the KZN Winter and this is what you are in for…sunny skies. Warm and clean water. And. Winter gamefish!

Winter Gamefish

Already the garrick have come inside and have been terrorising the many shoals of mullet and little silver bream. And there have been a few concerning sightings of GTs too. Big ones! These guys are nocturnal in the estuaries and those big explosions that keep you up at night when visiting here – can be blamed squarely on that gang.

The zambezi’s have been consistent too. Making their appearances also mainly during the readily available night time slots.

Many kob have been getting caught out on the sandspit. Yes, at night time. And man-oh-man it’s hard work. You got to set up and prepare for the all-night boogie if you want one of those huge fish. Get in touch if you have what it takes.

Shaun, David and Kiran

All the way down from Jhb, these guys know how to time it right They also had a few days so were able to plan around the weather.

We fished the mouth area of the Umzimkulu River estuary in Port Shepstone, KZN, on this fine day. Since this was the best area as we vied for the warmer, more fish-filled water. Melting snow on the Drakensberg has been keeping the upper reaches of the estuary extremely cold. Like 13 degrees!

And so we trolled a few lures from Umzimkulu Adrenalin down to the chosen spot. Setup fishing camp, and gave it a shot.

Enjoy this smash hit featuring Goby One Kanobi and the Spotted Grunters…

Goby One Kanobi

Sometimes we just get walk-in volunteers here at The Sardine News. And on this shoot, none other than Goby One Kanobi himself popped in front of the lens. For more than one appearance.

This guy is so cute and is an absolute natural on camera. He got all the moves and love the mirror reflection of himself in the camera lens.

Thanks Goby – I know exactly where to find you for next time!

African Damsel

An African Damsel glides across the screen in scene 2. Having taken the form of a graceful and regal African Spadefish. In the estuary! She moves so incredibly slowly, no wonder the spearos can’t miss them.

The Cape Stumpnose community was represented too. But there were notably less small fish that each of the last few trips we have made down this way,

And this is why…

The Spotted Grunter ambush position

Grunter Alley. Or more technically known as first bank. Is where the big grunter hang out – in ambush position. As the tide wafts water in through the mouth, it spills out all sorts of crunchy crustaceany morsels that these fish will eat. They will not eat a sardine bait when they are in this lively ambush state (As seen on camera).

I would only chuck a fly at these guys. Or a Dirty Prawn Umzimkulu Special bucktail, worked exactly right. To mimic a prawn bouncing along getting dragged with the tide. My cameras have picked up many large prawns coming IN the mouth on the pushing tide. Huge prawns like 6 inches long. Coming flying past and into the estuary. Coming to breed and populate.

And get eaten by these big grunter.

Wildeperd

There is a sheepshead in Oz, and another exact-looking species up the West Coast. Deemed to all be different. But these three fish all look exactly the same to me. They act the same too – very camera shy, but quite aggressive nonetheless. I have only filmed wildeperd underwater in the estuary a few times over the last few years. They normally hang out on the backline reefs and deeper.

Yes, you can call them Zebrafish!

And Kiran caught and released a healthy teenager, at the end of the day.

Great job Kiran!

By The Sardine News

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Rightio, this is definitely the time to be fishing. After the floods and all the craziness before that, you deserve to take a day or two off and come and hunt estuary gamefish in the name of research – with us. We release almost all our fish. Oftentimes with an ORI tag in it.

Bring your own I am running out!

Fishing and cruising activities are found right HERE on the Umzmkulu Adrenalin website. We got accommodation options at the Umzimkulu Marina, and Spillers House. And restaurants all around us including Garlic n Naan and Fish on the River.

Alchemy can save our KZN estuaries – featuring video with Benoit Leroy

Here in KZN, along the eastern seaboard of South Africa, we have systematically destroyed 99% of our estuaries.
Agriculture did this. We did agriculture.
Swathes of indigenous thickets and bush were ruthlessly replaced by invasive plants. Sugar. Wattle. Bluegum (these days it’s macadamias).
This was done before in colonial expansionist times. Nobody seemed to have a clue as to what they were doing to this planet.
All so that instead of walking places and growing our own food at home – we take taxis, cars and buses, work as wage slaves, to go buy food miles away in a grocery store?! Destroying our very habitat with each purchase.

And making those in the current revenue streams and in power, richer. And you, poorer as your earthly inheritance is destroyed for profit centric individuals and entities. Who got their positions from politics or inheritance in the first place.

Indigenous destruction

The removal of this indigenous buffer of bush has made for the inability of the earth in this region to absorb flood waters. Now it just runs straight down along the furrows and canals made by these profiteering farmers to remove the exact same water we need to stay there. Into the river that has been silted up by this exact practice. It bursts its banks. And people die.

This is what we have done.

Old habits

Things have changed. We now do have all the clues we need to make better decisions. We do not have to walk in the footsteps of our uninformed ancestors.

We have got these days, technology. Which brings forth a myriad of options on how to tackle a problem. We do not need to go back in time and use archaic failed methods to remedy modern human-made problems.

We do not need our last free-flowing estuary to suffer the same fate as all the 99% of the other estuaries have faced. Total commensurate destruction. By restricting the tidal and flood pulse. With unnatural barriers. Concrete.

We do not need to live with invasive species that have destroyed the very land which we inherited in perfect shape a hundred years ago.

We do not need to continue our destructive ways with the earth, it’s rivers and the oceans.

Desalination

Desalination. Will save the day here in Port Shepstone. Will bring water. Will bring hydrogen. Will bring prosperity to the area.

And will restore the estuaries.

But will not line the pockets of the surveyors, lobbyists, scientists, developers, politicians and others who rely on the archaic and completely unjust colonial system to maintain their big lifestyles on.

These profit-driven people want to build a concrete dam wall, or weir, right across the mighty Umzimkulu River. To abstract even more water from the already ailing river. Instead of a desalination plant.

For the same money!

Our money, to be precise.

Enjoy the picture show…

The big lie

And so here lies yet another aspect to the questionable problem of saltwater ingression.

The big lie. Saltwater intrusion to the St. Helen’sPump Station, 9kms upriver.

Even carp and bass get caught below the pump station in the dry season.

In my opinion, not a grain of sea salt has been near the pump station EVER! Prove me wrong. Because I know it was raw sewage being sucked out of the river and showing urine as salt. I know because I live here. Sewage pumps into the river all day every day because local government has failed to manage the once-functioning system year after year now. Spending exorbitant amounts on temporary non-functional and wasteful, environmentally damaging berms. Totally illegally.

Zambezi sharks have only this free-flowing river in KZN in which to still breed. St. Lucia is open now but it was closed for so long that all those Zambezi lost their breeding ground. When the estuary was opened recently by conservation activists, hundreds of pup Zambezi sharks we seen everywhere in the following days. These big mommas must have been waiting and waiting and waiting. No fair.

Turtles, all 4 species we get here, use the Umzimkulu, to rid themselves of unwanted parasites. They come inside the estuary for weeks. Venturing right up to the freshwater, where the parasites can’t live. And they fall right off! Like a carwash for turtles.

The fabulously difficult fish to catch – our indigenous Ox-eye Tarpon, lives way upriver, in the fresh, But cruises right on down to the salt to breed and spawn.

“It’s not sea salt! It’s sewage.”

I was here when the wolf cry went out. We tasted the water even! I know what saltwater tastes like. This was sewage water in our drinking water system. It smelt. Stank actually.

I would like to make an appeal for the salt level records of the pump station to be made available to the public. It is in the public interest to see how the decision to spend R200 million or more on damming a fully-functional estuary, comes about.

UGU Leaks

Any water problems we have here are actually due to the thousands of leaks all around the UGU District. Like the one under the low-level bridge across the river – over two years flat our blasting water back into where it came from. At our expense.

These are the problems that needs to be fixed. The system will operatee fine without the leaks. Wait until you read about St. Helen’s waterfall (coming soon).

How does anyone think that extracting more water from the already suffering system, will help the future? The river only has so much water and we have polluted and extracted it to a maximum threshold.

Fix the pipes! Use your endless budget to fix all that is broken. Use it to embrace and deploy the best and most relevant technologies to our problem here.

Summary

This is not the current government’s fault. But it is their duty to fix it. Or what are doing in office in the first place?

Advice to kids – don’t go into development, surveying or construction. Do research and conservation. Horticulture and aquaponics. Botany. Biology. Anything rather than end up like these guilty parties.

Use concrete for the right things. Not profit.

Words by Sean Lange. Video by Benoit Leroy produced by The Sardine News.

Come and check the river out yourself with Umzimkulu Adrenalin.