PROTEA Banks, off Shelly Beach, has been preliminarily identified in a proposed marine protected area (MPA) network, together with Tugela Banks, and the expansion of the Aliwal Shoal and iSimangaliso MPAs.
In a recent report released by Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, these areas were also identified as important for protection in the 2011 National Spatial Biodiversity Assessment, which highlighted the inadequate protection of our marine environment.
MPAs are an important component of marine spatial planning, and aim to ensure protection of species and habitats in no-take as well as areas zoned for particular uses.
They can benefit fisheries, by protecting spawning and nursery areas and result in spill-over of fish from healthy populations inside no-take zones.
The marine environment of KZN is heavily used for many different activities such as tourism (diving, swimming, boating), recreational fishing (such as spearfishing, ski-boat fishing and rock and surf angling) and commercial fishing (line and trawling).
More recently new formal uses are emerging. The newly published national small-scale fishing policy aims to provide access to previously marginalised subsistence fishermen, and there is now strong interest in mining the sea-bed for minerals, as well as oil and gas exploration and production.
Currently, 97 percent of the South African territorial ocean space is used for various recreational and commercial activity, or has mining prospecting rights assigned to it.
Only 0.4 percent of this is currently conserved within a marine protected area. This falls far short of the 10 percent protection of the oceans to which SA has committed internationally. As a step towards this it has been proposed that SA establish a national network of viable representative MPAs to achieve a milestone of five percent protection by 2016.
To this end 21 important areas across the South Africa Exclusive Economic Zone have been proposed for inclusion in a network of marine protected areas designed to protect a representative proportion of the different marine bioregions and their associated unique biodiversity.
The recent focus meeting held with the local fishing groups was in order to obtain inputs and gather comments on a proposed MPA within the Protea Banks region.
The meeting formed part of a larger engagement process where all interested and affected parties will be given an opportunity to give inputs and provide comments.
The aim of these preliminary consultations is to obtain information from local experts to be used in preparing the marine protected area proposals that are planned to be published in the Government Gazette in March 2015 for public comment.
The key stakeholders being consulted at this time are therefore being given an opportunity to help in shaping the proposal, and to highlight any critical issues or impacts a protected area might have (both negative and positive) so that these can be taken into consideration at the outset.
The proposal presented at the meeting highlighted the area identified as having important habitats and species unique to South Africa and worth protecting, and is not a finalised protected area.
This will mark the start of a full public consultation process, which will involve at least 60 days for people to submit formal comment as well as public meetings and workshops where people will be able to engage directly with the Department of Environment Affairs and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife officials to discuss the proposals, provide information and comments.
Key stakeholders will therefore have a further opportunity to state their views and opinions once the proposals have been formally announced in March 2015.
All comments and suggestions will be considered before any specific MPA is declared (legally proclaimed) as part of the national MPA network.
