Beach closures leave businesses high and dry

WHILE the festive season usually brings an influx of tourists to the Golden Mile, local surf-business owners are facing an uncertain December period, following ongoing beach closures in recent months. This week, several business owners told Berea Mail how beach closures have impacted them.

Jean-Marc Tostee, owner of Surf HQ in central Durban, says businesses are closing their doors all around his Sylvester Ntuli Road shop. For Tostee, businesses already dampened by the Covid-19 pandemic were dealt a further blow by the KZN floods and resulting sewage spills.

“After Christmas, the Easter weekend is our second biggest week of income. The floods annihilated the coast of KZN just before Easter – we lost all that trade and income. Everything was closed,” he said. “As thing started coming right, we had the second flood in May – it caused worse damage because it impacted on an already fragile system damaged in the first flood. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Ongoing beach closures from May until the present have left Tostee’s business crumbling.

Natasha Whittaker, who runs the surf school, Current School, said she lost about 70–80 % of her business which catered predominantly to children.

“I lost most of my clientele. I have had a handful of older surfers who will surf once or twice if the water looks clean. One of my students is an adaptive surfer who was getting ready for world champs (ISA World Para Surfing Championship). I couldn’t put him in the water because of the condition of the water, and he didn’t end up going to champs – it was devastating,” she said.

Whittaker is based at Morningside guesthouse, Soulhouse, which has also seen a decline in business during the beach closures. Soulhouse owner, Jacques Terblanche, said business has dropped about 50%. Terblanche said business has been so turbulent that he has stopped taking deposits from guests.

“I have lost bookings from a big Dutch group and an Israeli group,” he said.

ALSO READ: City opens several beaches

Informal vendors

Beach closures have also impacted informal traders, among them, Godfrey Colbeck, a vendor who sells cooldrinks and snacks from a cart on the promenade near uShaka Beach.

“I usually earn extra money in December. I am not sure what will happen this year. It seems like things are getting better, but I can’t say. On weekends, when the beach is busy, I make about R700 per day. In the December holidays, I would make more. I am hoping this year things will go well. On a quiet day, I make less than R100,” he said.

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“When the beaches are closed, it impacts us as vendors because most tourists from inland visit Durban for the beach. If the beach is closed, they do not come here,” he added.

A few kilometers down the Golden Mile at North Beach, Berea Mail spoke to another vendor who wanted to remain anonymous. The vendor was selling various items, including beach hats, towels and beaded wares at the Beachfront market.

“Business has been very bad. It’s hard to make as little as R200 a day and my transport to come here is R50. I have stopped buying stock. I am nervous about the December period – we used to make about R6 000 a week when it was busy in December,” said the vendor.

Water testing

The eThekwinin Municipality last week reopened several beaches including Point, uShaka, Addington, South, Wedge, North, Bay of Plenty, Battery, Country Club, Brighton, Reunion, Pipeline, Toti Main, and Warner beaches.

EThekwini Municipality spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela said the City makes a decision to close beaches when E. coli counts are higher than 500 colony-forming units per 100ml water.

“Generally, beach-water quality monitoring is done at least twice a month. But lately, beach monitoring frequency has been increased to weekly, up until further notice,” he said.

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Adopt-a-River, a local non-profit organisation, has also been conducting regular tests through Talbot laboratories. Adopt-a-River founder Janet Simpkins said data collected assists their work in tracking water quality over time.

“We are using the testing to monitor trends over time, to see which beaches are generally safer. What we’ve picked up is that Battery Beach and Country Club are problematic beaches. Trends have shown that they tend to show higher levels of E. coli than other beaches. When we pick up a high result, we can follow up,” she explained.

Simpkins added that their samples are generally collected on a Thursday and sent to the lab by the late afternoon.
“We test on a Thursday and get our results on a Monday. We cannot give an accurate real-time result. It can change by the day,” said Simpkins.