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Loosing Fish Stocks to Ghost Fishing.
Shoreline Fishing in South Africa is both a popular recreational past time and necessary subsidence activity as a means of supplementing dietary protein requirements distinguished by socio economic circumstances of the fishermen.

Puffadder Shyshark killed by ghost fishing. The rust mark of the hook can be seen on the left hand side of the jaw. Doubly tragic is the fact that this female had two eggs ready to lay which also died as a result of her death.
The Cost To Marine Biodiversity.
Equipment is determined by budget with sports and recreational shark fisherman using expensive and sophisticated tackle while subsistence fishermen use a more simple setup, often a hand line with small hooks and a single in line sinker. How fishing tackle is set up and where fishing takes places influences both the rate of snagging and the manner in which gear snags. Ultimately how and where line fishing occurs determines the rate of snagging, damage to reefs,and the threat of ghost fishing and entanglements.

What is Ghost Fishing?
Ghost fishing is defined as the ability for lost fishing gear to continue catching and killing fish. Most of the research on ghost fishing focuses on the impact of industrial fishing, such as trawling and long lining, when gear is lost with little attention or research placed on the impact of recreational surf fishing.
Research has shown that a snagged fishing hook has the latent ability to 'ghost fish' up to 10 fish before it disintegrates. The ramifications on inshore fishing stocks is severe.

Tackling Ghost Fishing?
Our survey dives have shown that both location and tackle setup determine how fishing gear snags. Tackle setup to target game fish and sharks snags when the sinker caught on the rocky reef. The baited hook then floats above the seabed and reef. Some gear has been setup with floats attached to the shaft of the hook which further increases the buoyancy of the baited hook, presenting the perfect opportunity to ghost fish.

Geared up for Research.
On our first dive we were all equipped with bags to collect recovered fishing debris in. This proved to be inefficient as the bags filled up. The sinker made divers negatively buoyant and the monofilament tended to drift out of the bags each time it was opened to put more tackle in.
We then setup some floating buckets, buoyed by an inner tube and anchored with a line attached to a 2kg weight. The buckets are then left floating on the surface and divers swim to them when they need to off load collected tackle.

Preliminary Findings

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