Where are the sardines today?

Where are the sardines today? Kevin answers…

alright another awesome net here at Rocky Bay guys
make your way down here at Rocky Bay
uh
moonlight Adcan Marine we did it again yeah
a nice lovely beautiful net guys
make your way down here
well done
our team is our team is happening yeah
OK
morning chaps this is Kevin at Qora Mouth
just north of Mazeppa Bay in the Southern Transkei
well we got lots of action still going on in KZN guys
um if you’re in the public
and you’re driving around looking
and you wanna go watch some netting happening
Rocky Bay is the hotspot
there’s also a net being pulled at Umkomaas and um yeah
good news for the netters
that they’re kind of sticking around in the same area
so the netters don’t have to wonder every day
where they are and what is probably happening
is that the predators have now fractured up
these bigger shoals and these sardines are caught
uh in these little bays behind headlands and um
perfect opportunity for the netters
to surround a bait ball and bring everything to shore
so if you look at the video yeah
you’ll see how big these nets are guys
these are hundreds and hundreds of crates of sardines
that are coming up coming out of the water
which is good news for the industry because obviously
a lot of these sardines end up in boxes
which is the bait for the ski boaters
and the fishermen for the next year
it’s a huge industry and um yeah
I’m sure
you’ll get a chance to go down and buy a crate or two
if you’re part of the public
um wanting to get some fresh fish
but please keep away from the netters
as we’ve discussed
it’s dangerous work and tempers get a little bit flared
um what I can tell you from the Southern Transkei
is that
I’ve got thousands of birds that are moving north
very close to shore
there’s 20 to 30 birds in a line and low on the water
which means uh
being this early in the day
they’re going towards the sardines
they’re not going home so what has
actually happened is that
that shoal that was off East London
I suspect has moved out deep
exactly the same as the last shoal did
and the reason for that is that there’s probably very
very little current out there as well
and they’re going deeper in the water column
where they’re finding the water
that’s a little bit cooler
which facilitates
them moving a lot faster up the coast
and we do know that obviously this is an anomaly
the sardine run is a fractured group
off of the main shoal
that basically lives on the Agulhas Bank
about 2 to 300 km off of Cape Town out in the deep
and they move up the west coast of Africa every year
to spawn and head back to their Agulhas Bank
um for the summer
but the sardine run is just a little fractured group
that take a wrong turn and move up the East Coast
so they they’re out deep
I’m sure that they will come in eventually
because what happens is
that they’re sitting right on the continental shelf
which is about 19 km out here
and as you get further up the coast
our continental shelf kind of pinches in a little bit
that’s why when they get towards KZN
they move in a lot closer
so we can probably expect the same thing to happen now
that this shell will make it in closer
but um not yet
they’re out deep so that’s good news for
the netters
because it means there’s a whole lot more still coming
and I don’t think it’s over yet chaps
so yeah let’s just watch and wait
but keep things real guys
and we’ll keep you
keep in touch with you as the conditions change
and we got spotters on the ground
as you probably realise all over KZN
we got guys sending us videos
sending us current updates
so yeah we’ll keep you updated as things happen cheers

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