Illegal shad haul hooked on Virginia Beach
Anglers bury more than 40 shad in the dunes around Virginia Beach in order to escape being fined.
EZEMVELO KZN Wildlife officers confiscated 48 illegally captured shad hidden in the dunes on Virginia Beach last Saturday. Basil Pather, conservation manager at Beachwood Mangroves Nature Reserve, said that once the shad season had opened, some anglers had tried taking advantage of their bag limits by hiding their catches in the sand or burying them behind the dune vegetation to avoid fines.
To ensure that future generations continue to catch and enjoy shad, catch restrictions were introduced in 1916, a bag limit was set in 1973, and the closed season was introduced in 1977. The species has a minimum size of 30cm, and anglers may only keep four fish per day.
“To avoid being caught some fishermen dig a hole in the sand and cover the shad up. We confiscated 48 shad which were buried in the dunes at Virgina Beach last week. In the past we’ve also noticed some of them going as far as burying fish near the boundary walls of houses along the beachfront. Nobody claimed responsibility for the haul and we confiscated the load. You are only allowed four and this was over and above the legal limit.
“The law was quite specific on the issue of stockpiling and stated that no person could ‘on any one day’ be in possession of more than four shad,” he said.
The most popular spots, according to Pather, are the Shipwreck Beach (La Lucia), Virginia Beach, Glenashley Beach and Peace Cottage (uMhlanga). He advised anglers not to flout the law or else they would be fined.
“I cannot say every fisherman is involved in this but we cannot allow this many shad to be taken on a daily basis. Approximately 60 per cent of all fish caught by shore anglers on the KZN coast are shad,” he said.
He added some anglers accused the wildlife officers of confiscating the fish to use themselves.
“That is just not true. We hand over all illegal catches to the Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI) for research purposes and are audited on a regular basis. While there haven’t been many cases of overfishing so far, we cannot allow the flouting of bag limits or else it would hurt the shad population because anglers also target them in the closed season,” he said.
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