Run Sardine Run!

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Each year in June or July along the KwaZulu-Natal coast the word gets out and, within hours, crowds of frenzied human predators converge on the area to join sharks, gamefish, marine mammals and birds in a feeding orgy. It is a time of plenty for all as large shoals of pilchards move in a band up the coast. The 'sardine run' has begun . . .

Fresh, frozen, canned, pickled or bait - whatever way you consider them, sardines will have featured somewhere in your life. Although known to many as the South African sardine, this little fish is more correctly named the pilchard Sardinops sagax. Like their close relatives, the anchovies and herrings, pilchards live out their lives in huge shoals in the surface layers of the ocean. Although these fish are small, collectively they comprise nearly a quarter of the world's fish catch by weight, making them one of our most valuable groups of fish.

Pilchards are cold-water fish and are usually associated with areas of cold ocean upwelling, where deeper, cooler, nutrient-rich water currents surge to the surface when they strike shallow coastal areas. Pilchards are commonly found in enormous shoals on the west coasts of California, South America, Japan, Australia and, of course, southern Africa.

In the large pilchard fishery along the Western Cape coast, about 100 000 tonnes are caught annually. Each night, weather and season dependent, fleets of purse-seiners set out from harbours dotted along the coastline. Once a shoal has been located, huge nets are used to encircle and draw the fish up alongside the vessel before they are pumped on board. Depending on the quality of the fish, the catch may be canned or ground into fishmeal. This fishery employs thousands of people in the Western Cape, and is the economic backbone of many coastal communities in the area. Up the east coast, the annual catch drops progressively from 7 000 tonnes in the Eastern Cape to 700 tonnes in KwaZulu-Natal waters.

Pilchards live fast and die young. They grow rapidly to reach a length of just under 20 centimetres and sexual maturity in two years, but rarely live longer than three years. In compensation, they are highly fecund, each female producing many thousands of eggs in her short lifespan. The main spawning grounds are on the Agulhas banks off the southern Cape coast, where the adults gather for a prolonged breeding season through spring and early summer. The eggs are simply released into the water, fertilized and left to drift off in the open ocean. A benign ocean current carries most of the developing larvae westwards and northwards into the productive waters along the west coast. After growing into juvenile fish that are strong enough to swim against the current, they aggregate into dense shoals and slowly make their way back to their spawning grounds in the south, thereby completing their life cycle.

Pilchards feed primarily on plankton, minute plants and animals that they filter from the sea using sieve-like gill rakers. In turn, the exceptional productivity of pilchards fuels the populations of most of the larger marine predators. Gamefish, birds, seals and dolphins compete with man for a share of the bounty. The sight of wheeling squadrons of gannets folding their wings to plummet into the water around a school of hundreds of dolphins surging after a boiling mass of panic-stricken fish is an extraordinary spectacle. So too is the equally frenzied behaviour of man when shoals of pilchards are pushed ashore during the famous 'sardine run'.

The sardine run is an annual phenomenon sparked by the entry of large shoals of pilchards into the waters of southern KwaZulu-Natal during the winter months. Although the great bulk of South Africa's pilchard stock is to be found in the cooler Cape waters, each winter a small proportion of the stock moves eastwards up the Wild Coast. These shoals follow a cooler counter current that penetrates up the east coast as a narrow band between the coast and the warm, south-flowing Agulhas Current. Because the fish become concentrated into a narrow inshore band of water, the shoals are quickly located by schools of marauding predators that are whipped into a frenzy by this brief period of plenty in their otherwise less productive waters. Sharks, such as the copper, dusky, black-tip and spinner, join gamefish such as shad, garrick and geelbek, and marine mammals like Cape fur seals and dolphins in hot pursuit of the shimmering mass of pilchards, or each other. As the shoals are driven to the surface, birds - Cape gannets, cormorants, terns and gulls - plummet out of the sky to pillage from above. The appearance of common dolphins along the KwaZulu-Natal south coast is closely associated with the arrival of the sardine run and it has even been suggested that the female dolphins use the plentiful food supply to wean their calves and replenish their depleted fat stores.

The mêlée of predators is problematic, not just to the pilchards, but also to the Natal Sharks Board (NSB). The shark nets that provide bather protection along the beaches take a heavy toll of sharks and dolphins if they are not lifted before the arrival of the sardine run. In addition, damage to the nets themselves carries a heavy financial cost to the NSB. The organization's ability to monitor the movements of the run has improved over the years. In the decade from 1978 to 1987, an average of 344 sharks was caught annually at the beaches south of Durban in the June-July period. In the subsequent decade, 1988-1997, this number was reduced to 228 sharks.

The progress of the sardine run is closely monitored by anglers, who flock to the beaches and rocks to participate in excellent game-fishing. Commercial fishing of the pilchards themselves is also undertaken using beach seine nets, which are pulled from the shore. While one group of fishers holds a rope at one end of the net, the other end is cast around the shoal of fish using a small boat. The encircled fish are then dragged ashore, where they are quickly scooped into baskets both by the fishers and many eager helpers. These fish are usually sold for human consumption or bait. Particular wind and current conditions may force the pilchards very close to the beach, where they are easily caught using baskets, hand nets or even skirts. In fact, when pilchards are beaching anything goes, and it is not uncommon to see grandmothers competing with teenagers for 'their' share of the feast in a social occasion that draws crowds into the surf and even larger crowds of awed and amused spectators.

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Run Sardine Run!