Cape Town - Efforts to stabilise the declining population of African penguins continue with Environment Minister Barbara Creecy announcing that last year’s temporary closure to commercial fishing around major penguin colonies has been extended to mid-April.
This was to combat the issue of resource competition between the fishing industry and the penguins, which was thought to be the biggest threat to the species as sardine stock in South African waters remained at low levels.
Creecy has also appointed an international expert review panel to advise on managing and balancing the interactions between the small pelagic (anchovy and sardines) fishery and the conservation of African penguins. Further decisions on the matter will be made depending on the outcomes of the panel.
The Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (Sanccob) eagerly welcomed the extension of the closures but urged the minister to extend the closures until the international panel finalised its work.
The foundation said that for a successful breeding season, the penguins relied on sufficient food during the entire year.
Sanccob research manager Katta Ludynia said: “Opening the areas to fishing in mid-April could be detrimental as birds may abandon their chicks if they do not find sufficient food later in the season.
“We hope that the panel will support the need for long-term or permanent closures around the main African penguin breeding islands, based on the evidence that the conservation sector has supplied for over 12 years.”
Sanccob CEO Natalie Maskell said that they, together with conservation partners BirdLife South Africa, WWF South Africa, and Endangered Wildlife Trust, have collaborated to highlight that island closures could help save the endangered species.
Speaking about the impact of this on fisheries, SA United Fishing Front national co-ordinator Pedro Garcia said that in most instances these rights were owned by major industrial fishing companies who were already oversubscribed with many other fisheries’d rights that provided them a cushion from possible negative impacts.
Ludynia said the proposed closures covered very small areas of the South African exclusive economic zones and very small parts of the areas that commercial fisheries worked in.
The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) announced the temporary closure of some areas around major penguin colonies to commercial fishing in September last year until January 14 as a precautionary measure to ensure the survival of the species while balancing ecological and socio-economic interests.
Craig Smith, senior manager of WWF South Africa’s marine programme, said the island closures provided an option to reduce the interaction between the fishing industry and the African penguins but the closure came too late last year as the penguin breeding season had already completed and the fishing industry had already caught most of its quotas for the year.