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Sardine Results - What Now - 2 June 2024

Sardine Results – what now? 3 June 2024 Report by Kevin in Qora

Sardine Results – what now? 3 June 2024 Report by Kevin in Qora: Kevin in Qora lays out our prospects of sardine run action for this week, the first week of June 2024.

Over to Kevin…

“Morning chaps, this is Kevin reporting from Qora Mouth, just north of Mazepa Bay on Southern Transkei. Well, that was certainly an interesting couple of days as this front moved through and was dominated by a cut off low which kept it sitting right over the coast. Very unseasonable rain, but we got about 120 millimeters down here at the coast, which we’re very thankful for because as far as the sardines and how this is going to affect them I think we have to look at a couple of factors.

The first one obviously being dirty water. The River, which is our river, has a very limited catchment area. It only stretches about 70 to 80 kilometers inland. So that water comes through to the estuaries extremely fast, and normally within one or two tide cycles it’s flushed out already, and it dissipates in the southerly current.

But we do have two major rivers in the Transkei, the southern Transkei. Which are the Kei River and the Mbashi River. Both of those have extremely large catchment areas. The Mbashi River starts somewhere way up in Lesotho near Tifindels and the Kei River goes equally far inland. So it’s going to take a couple days for those catchment areas to filter into the river and then for that water to actually reach the coast.

So I’m going to give it let’s say 72 hours. And then we’ll have a much better idea of what the water quality is going to be like in the inshore region. Second factor that’s definitely affects the movement of the sardines is the swell and the swell direction. We’ve had a sustained wind of 18 meters a second, which translates to about 70 kilometers an hour.

And it was a straight southeaster. Which means it came straight in off the ocean. And that’s evident today in about a 46 meter swell breaking. It’s breaking about a kilometer out to sea. And it’s definitely overridden the predominant south swell that was running. And so we’re going to have to wait for this to dissipate a little bit.

But just being a localized swell it will dissipate extremely fast and the south swell will dominate again over the next 24 to 48 hours. So that that will help the sardines to get moving again. The other factor is, that’s very important right now, is that the southeasterly swell has caused a huge upwelling of ice cold water.

There was a mist on the water this morning and I went and tested it. And it’s running at just below 14 degrees. So lovely temperature water for the sods to get moving in. So I’m going to say over the next 48 to 72 hours we should see major movement of the sardines depending on what the water color looks like once the larger catchment areas kind of send their water to the coast.

So anyway, Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the big shoals that were moving through prior to this front get up and go again. Cool, that’s all I got for now. I’ll keep you updated as things change. Cheers.”

Thank you Kevin, we are all on the edge of our seats about these damn sardines! And the ruddy weather! When’s it gonna stop?!