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A Week of Sardines by Kevin of Wild Coast Cottages 28 June 2024

A Week of Sardines by Kevin in Qora 28 June 2024

A Week of Sardines by Kevin in Qora 28 June 2024: thank you Kevin!

?How’s it, everyone? This is Kevin at Qora Mouth, just north of Mazepa Bay in the southern Transkei. Well, what a beautiful day down here. Slight breeze blowing, beautiful warm day, and life is good in the Transkei. But anyway, let’s talk sardines. That’s what we’re here for. As we’ve heard, Multiple nets have come out this week.

Pennington, Winklespruit, and we’re hearing of shoals of sardines stretching the whole way up the south coast. There might even be some reports of around Ballito Bay that there’s a lot of dolphin activity. Whether that’s just bait balls of other bait fish, or whether that actually is the sardines, we haven’t had confirmation of yet.

But we can say that these sods have done exactly as we forecast they were going to do. So let’s really just try and break that down quickly for those people that haven’t watched any of the previous videos. So when these shoals of sardines, and this is obviously the mother load that has come through this winter time, and what they do is that they travel in a cold plume of water up the east coast of Africa, and if the water gets too warm as they reach the Durban area, then what they tend to do is that shoal, even though it might be fractured into smaller shoals, they do definitely move out into deeper water where they seek a little bit of colder water, but they’re migratory instincts are still telling them to head north.

So they’re not going to head out into the deep and jump on the current and head back to the Agalus Bank, because we’re still right in the middle of winter. So they’re heading north either way, and for about a week they headed out deep, and that’s because the water around Durban was around the 24 25 degree mark, which is way too warm for these sardines.

What has happened now is that in the last 3 4 days that temperature dropped drastically down to around 19 20 degrees and apparently it’s very stable now around 20 21 degrees, which is perfect for these sardines. We did also have a south swell that came through here down in the Eastern Cape. And that south swell is probably hitting Durban around now.

It’s been pumping the last two days here. And it’s now a decreasing swell. So that south swell is starting to dissipate down here by us. But it’s probably just reaching Durban by now. And as we know from previous videos, this is Ideal situations for the sardines because they, they move very close in shore because the closer they get in towards the land the more energy is released by those south swells due to friction with the shallower water and then those sardines come right to the surface right next to the coast and they start using that energy to help them move forward against the current because the current is the north to south. The Benguela current and the south swell is moving from south to north. So yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening. And yeah, I think chaps, we can expect a lot more next nets to be coming out over the next week or so. I don’t think this is the end of it. I think this is just the beginning because there’s so many shoals offshore and yeah those are all going to move closer and as they start moving up the coast past Durban around the bluff they’ll keep marching up the north coast until they reach warmer water which is when they will then dissipate or move out into the current and that would be in about two to three weeks time.

So anyway lots of actions still ahead chaps. Well done to all the netters. You guys having a bumper season and we’re so happy for you because we know you wait all year for this kind of a situation to happen and thank you for the public that we’ve had reports that the public are really you know listening to what we’re asking and they’re staying back giving the netters some room so the netters have actually thanked us for for just bringing it to your attention so yeah Life is good guys.

Life is good. This is the Sardine Run 2024. It’s in full swing. So let’s keep it real. As we always say, conserve and protect. Keep those beaches clean. If you’re out there watching the sardine action and you see some trash on the beach, please just pick it up. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t yours. It just means that we’re keeping these beaches as they should be, pristine and beautiful for everybody to enjoy.

So cool guys. That’s all we got for today. And the weekend is upon us. I hope you guys all have a safe weekend. And I hope all those families that want to see the sardines, I could say that the best areas to go to are going to be between Pennington and the Bluff. You don’t need to go very deep south coast now.

I think these sides have all moved up much closer towards the Bluff. So any of those areas, I think you could expect to find something happening and at least get to experience the sardine run, even if it is from the top of the beach and watching what’s going on. Anyway, thanks for watching. That’s it.

Over and out from me. We’ll keep you updated as things change. Cheers.

Thank you Kevin!