River eco-warrior braves threats to thwart poachers
WATER GUARDIAN: Emil Pirzenthal is indignant about the impact illegal gill-netting has on fish populations ARMED with a torch, his knowledge of local waters and a passion for the environment, ecowarrior Emil Pirzenthal is determined to rid KwaZulu-Natal’s rivers of illegal fishing nets.
This has become his mission, even if it means hitting the water at 2am to search for the massive gill nets that poachers use to plunder the province’s fish stocks by the bakkie-load.
Despite being illegal in South Africa, the nets — some as long as 300m or 400m — are being set “in nearly all rivers and estuaries” in KwaZulu-Natal, provincial authority Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife admitted. The poachers can pull out as much as 100kg of fish per net each night.
The uMkomazi River, near Pirzenthal’s house in Widenham on the South Coast, is one of the most severely affected.
“I first noticed it more than 10 DEATH TRAP: The remains of a gill net removed and destroyed by Emil Pirzenthal years ago, when I saw the first set of gill nets in the river,” the 50-year-old said this week. “I started going out with a small boat and pulling the nets out. We’d get maybe between two SEARCH AND DESTROY: Assisted by a local resident, Emil Pirzenthal launches his inflatable dive boat early one morning at the uMkomazi River mouth. The boat is used to search the river banks for gill nets and flotation devices left by illegal fishermen and six nets a year. But in the past two years it’s exploded. The number of nets we’re finding is just ridiculous. As many as three in one night.”
The gill nets stretch from the bottom of the river to the surface, and from one bank to the other. With most rivers in the province not much deeper than 2m, they catch almost everything. Unlike in the past, the nets are commercially made. Pirzenthal said he had heard they were being shipped in from Malawi, where gill-netting is a major problem.
“The fish swim into the net and put their heads partially through it and their gills hook into it. They can’t reverse because a fish can’t swim backwards.”
The most common fish caught are grunter, bull mullet, rock salmon, cob, mangrove jacks and mud bream — but Pirzenthal said “almost everything” was being caught.
The rivers along the coastline have been plundered to the extent that subsistence fishermen complain they cannot make a catch for weeks at a time.
“From the nets we’ve pulled, the least amount of fish we’ve found is about 30kg in a single net,” said Pirzenthal. “The most is over 100 kilos. If my worst rate is 30kg, take that over a month and that’s 900kg of fish. At a price of R40 to R50 a kilo, that’s just under R40 000 to R50 000 a month per net. The amount of fish they are taking out is ridiculous. And it’s the subsistence guys who are suffering.”
Ezemvelo spokesman Musa Mntambo said: “The fish are being targeted by organised groups of poachers, not subsistence users. There have been claims that a single haul of fish could be sold for up to R1 500 [and] . . . that small fish are sold at R7 each and the sizable ones for up to R90 each.”
This greed and plundering of the environment drove Pirzenthal to act. Not only does he remove nets, he burns them.
This activism has not been without danger. “I’ve had a few threats that they’re going to set a trap for me one night and when I take it [the net] out, they’re going to shoot me and stuff. But the local guys say it’s just talk,” he said.
“This is something I believe in. You’re seeing a subsistence fisherman sitting on the river bank and he can’t catch a mullet for dinner, and it’s all because of these nets.”