The annual “sardine run” — the migration of shoals of millions of silvery pilchards pursued by schools of marauding predators including sharks, game fish and dive-bombing birds — is a much-anticipated phenomenon along the KwaZulu-Natal coast. Some years the harvest is small but 2010 is proving to be a record year.
This year the sardines came late. It’s as if they were biding their time; waiting for the World Cup hoopla to end.
When they finally came, they arrived en masse — and they’re still coming.
“Patience is the name of the game.” Commercial fisherman Mark Christy is sitting in his vehicle on the sand at Durban’s Addington Beach. He’s driven to the city from the Eastern Cape for the sardines. He’s come each year for the past 30, he says.
“They don’t always come ashore like this. Some years the ‘run’ doesn’t really even happen. This is a really good season.”
In fact it’s not just a good season. It’s a record season. Only four times in 30 years have such massive shoals come to Durban and huge numbers of fish are being netted at beaches up and down the KwaZulu-Natal coast.
But still, patience is needed.
Seine nets are traditionally used to catch the sards. Poor things haven’t got a hope in hell when it’s done right, and neither do the small rays and other species of fish inopportunely caught along with them, which made me think there needs to be a better way.
But if you’re a commercial fisherman like Christy, your eye is firmly on the catch, which needs to be large enough to make casting a net worthwhile.
“Early mornings, the sardines normally are spread out,” he says. “Then at some point (at 8am yesterday although as late as 10am on some days) the fish seem to concentrate, and then we begin throwing our nets around them.”
He points to where three boats are doing exactly this. It’s mid-winter in Durban and it feels like summertime. The sun rose as a glowering red ball way out over the ocean when I first got to the beach to look for the sards. The smallest hint of early morning chill disappeared soon as the beach turned golden. The morning is balmy. The water is warm enough to swim without a wetsuit.
The only person I see wearing one is the scuba divers with the piercing beneath his lower lip who says he’s hoping to go and spear a few of the game fish that typically follow the sardines. “But it is scary as you’re always watching out for the sharks,” he admits.
Durban’s several swimming beaches are among 38 along the KwaZulu-Natal coast where swimmers (and the tourism industry) are protected by shark nets and drum lines. [See the story: KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board keeps Durban beaches safe. Tourists invited to see how. Slideshow.]
Shark Frenzy
When the sardines come, the shark nets and drum lines are lifted to protect the dolphins, sharks and game fish that typically follow the shoals. Bathing at the beaches, when the nets are lifted, is at your peril and, in fact, banned.
Christy keeps scanning the sea as authorized vehicles ply the stretch of shoreline looking for evidence of the shoals; deciding where best to cast their nets. The first netter pulls in a few crates of Portuguese sardines. “Those are smaller than the regular sardines,” says Christie.
A second netting crew comes up almost empty-handed.
But then, it seems, the sardines start to really run.
Christy is up and off in a flash to a different part of the beach. People begin to arrive en masse as the local East Coast Radio station does their daily sardine report, advising people where nets are cast.
Some come carrying plastic bags. Some will buy sardines by the crate. Many tons will be caught and frozen and used, all year, for bait. While the phenomenon is the subject of scientific research and attracts interest — and tourists — from around the world, it is Durban’s sardine-loving Indian population and the huge numbers of Indian fishermen for whom they have the greatest appeal.
“The sardines are a once-a-year craze. We must have them,” says Shakilla Haribans, from Durban, (pictured below right) who is standing on the beach with her mother, holding a plastic bag, waiting to buy her sards.
Masala Powder and Turmeric
“We listen each morning for the news and when we hear they’re netting, we come and check. We’ll get 3 dozen today. It’s our fourth time down to the beach for the sardines. This is a good year, better than usual.
“I’ll take them home, cut off the heads and clean out the insides and then marinate them in masala powder, salt and garlic, for about four hours. Then I’ll deep-fry them in cooking oil. I sometimes bake them. You squeeze lemon over them. They are the best thing.”
An Indian man carrying his few dozen sards to his car in a woven plastic orange bag suggests adding turmeric and flour to the masala for a tastier coating.
Watching the sards being pulled from the sea in the nets and shoveled into milk crates for their trip to markets and deep-freezes made me think of the loaves and the fishes fable, given that while there were no loaves, the fish just kept on coming. In terms of biomass, researchers estimate the sardine run could rival East Africa's great wildebeest migration.
About the Sardine Festival
Tagged “the greatest shoal on earth” even though their numbers and arrival date are unpredictable (which is part of the delight), the sardine run has spawned an annual Sardine Festival, held through June and July along the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast. This includes a “Sardine Mountain Bike Classic,” a Men’s Health “Cycle Lab Surfski Series,” a skiboat festival, a winter solstice festival, a jazz festival, a “Sardine Half Marathon and Walk” a “Portuguese Mariners Food & Wine Festival” and more.
The sardines — which are eaten by just about everything, including people — have traveled a way by the time they get to Durban, having spawned in the nutrient-rich waters off the Cape coast’s Agulhas Bank, where the warm Indian Ocean and the cold Atlantic Ocean meet.
The shoals can get up to 18 miles long and the feeding displays that result can be spectacular with predatory sharks and dolphins rounding up the sardines into huge, writhing, juicy bait balls of up to 65 feet (in diameter) by 32 feet (deep). Clouds of feasting Cape gannet, cormorants, terns and gulls are known to dive-bomb the water in veritable squadrons.
Christy predicts the sards will run for a few more days this year. It seems whoever said South Africa would suffer an (in)action hangover after the World Cup was wrong.
Story © Wanda Hennig, 2010. Photos Wanda Hennig
INFO BOX: See more on the greatest shoal on earth here.
See more about the sardines on the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board website here.
See the Sardine Festival website here.
Comments
Great fun, nice pictures.
That is pretty phenomenal, indeed.
A phenomenal phenomena.
Imagine my surprise to see sardines that are not 2 inches long as found in most tins. I thought they might be only slightly larger than krill. Very interesting article!
Fascinating story, amazing photos. You did it again, Wanda, demystifying Durban for your readers who haven't yet visited, but now want to. Keep up the great work.
Great photos. We went home to see family during these months, so missed all this.
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