Environmental, socioeconomic issues caused

Impacts of drone fishing

Having established interest in and the presence of drone fishing in SA, we sought to consider the issue holistically — its impact on:

● Targeted fish and their habitats;

● Other animals in the coastal zone;

● Other people using the coastal zone.

Drones with cameras allow anglers to identify ideal fishing habitats far from the shore. Areas that anglers couldn’t reach before are now open to exploitation.

Even fish that are released are less likely to survive when caught further offshore. A large fish hooked hundreds of metres offshore is likely to experience extreme exhaustion and physiological disturbance and may be consumed by other predators.

The potential loss of fishing tackle by drone anglers is also a concern.

It is common to lose tackle, either when it gets stuck in rocky habitats or while fighting large fish such as sharks. Both scenarios may result in hundreds of metres of fishing line remaining in the ocean. In addition to polluting the marine environment, such debris threatens to entangle birds, marine mammals and turtles.

In SA, drone fishing is only accessible to affluent anglers.

Their increased catches might lead to conflict with fishers who depend on their catch for food or income.

It’s also possible that sharing live information on fishing conditions via the internet could add to concerns about the privacy of other public beach users.

Our 2021, paper noted that at the time, there were no specific regulations relating to drone fishing in any country, including SA.

We drew attention to legislation that could be used indirectly to regulate the practice.

Regulation and management of fisheries

Three of the paper’s co-authors were part of a working group for the SA department of forestry, fisheries & the environment. We shared the paper with the department and, in 2022, it took concrete action on this issue for the first time.

The department released a public notice which explicitly prohibits drones and other remotely operated vehicles for angling.

Companies that custom build fishing drones were granted leave to appeal the original court ruling on their application to unban drone fishing. The appeal has not yet been heard.

We hope the end result will be better monitoring and management of SA recreational fishery, so that resources are available to those who need them the most.

Alexander Claus Winkler is a research associate at Rhodes University. —