Looking forward To 2023 and beyond

 Greetings from Frankie2Socks. 

The 4u2fish campaign is all about ensuring that we all ( Umkhanyakude residents) enjoy the fruits of the local tourism industry  which has a primary focus on #EnvironmentalTourism and associated tourism services, like fishing in lake St. Lucia,  fishing the St. Lucia estuary, Umfolozi mouth zone and fishing the adjacent Indian ocean.  

This all starts with a good heart, but things in resal life get all muddled and rather turbid like flood waters rushing towards the ocean.  So what is the 4u2Fish campaign going to be looking like in the near future and deep future ? 

Well that all depends on you, the reader here  and what you do about what you read here.,. Without folks talking about the 4u2Fish Campaign, we have lost even before we started. So the message here is talk about the 4u2Fish Campaign and ask questions around what the 4u2Fish management team is doing and why are they doing whatever it is that they are doing.

If information is not forth coming, then search for it on line using your favorite search engine or in your favorite social media platform. Find us and start a conversation 

The 4u2Fish management team needs help in many ways. Any body with some spare time, please send an email to 4u2fish@info4u.co.za explaing that you want to help and the team will get back to you just as soon as our resources allow us to.

Any and all help will be truly appreciated.

#Frankie2Socks for the #4u2Fish management team.

Ps have a great Christmas and enjoy what ever life gives you in the new year..... Good or not so good, just enjoy and be thankful for what you have, and not worry about what you want. Appreciate your health and enjoy every day like it is your last day. Life is great, so enjoy everything, and smile.,.  Coz you can ... 

Our first Stakeholders Engagement meeting with DEFF

 #PUBLICNOTICE

STAKEHOLDERS ENGAGEMENT MEETING.

The department of Forestry Fisheries and Environment will be holding a SPECIAL STAKEHOLDERS ENGAGEMENT MEETING in the St. Lucia area discussing the St. Lucia Estuary Mouth management from 15 to 16 November 2021.

This is big for us at the 4u2Fish campaign. It is our first major event we will be attending. Most of these type of public participation processes meetings bhave been held in secret in the past. Well at least that is our perspective, coz the marketing / advertising for such meetings has been exceptionally poor, and few folks have attended.

The IWPA or iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority is the government appointed body which runs the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage site, and they have been mandated by a vast number of different laws and legislations to have an IMP (Integrated Management Plan) in place. The Integrated Coastal Management Act dictates three levels of estuary management plans.

1) local government level

2) provincial level 

3) national 

Due to how the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority (IWPA) has been structured and  their mandate from central government, the IWPA is the responsible agent to implement the local government level mandated Estuary Management plan.  This mandated estuary manager plan is by rights meant to be a sub plan of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority  Integrated Management Plans

Now this is where things start to ge tout of hand, and every body starts avoiding responsibility, side stepping mandated public participation processes meetings (STAKEHOLDERS ENGAGEMENT MEETING)  and making plans that exclude some of the bigger stake holder groups, with the IWPA ignoring many of their other mandated responsobilities in terms of the world heritage convention act. 

The 4u2fish campaign would be truly apprciative if you could share this post and ask others to make a plan and either send a person to represent your interests or be there yourself. 

Fishing in the St. Lucia estuary is a waste of your time

Today, 9 October 2019, I took a drive to the beach at St. Lucia with Petrus Bierpens pens of #BierpensTV and then walked to where the whale watching boats launch. It was such a beautiful morning, unfortunately my finances do not currently allow me the privilege of a camera to take some pics and upload them here.  Any way on the way from Ingwe Beach to the beach launch  location I walked along the estuary side and not the sea shore.

I was once again saddened by the mud flats full of flamingoes and a variety of fresh water ducks and other water birds in the space where we should be fishing the incoming tide. After the recent north east winds which blew the water from  lake St. Lucia into the Umfolozi and Umzinduze river deltas, and this mornings calmness, the water in the St. Lucia Estuary Mouth area was flowing happily from South to North, returning  into the lake systems north of St. Lucia.

Most folks have no idea of the vast volumes of water that the winds move around the St. Lucia lake system, or the scary figures of water evaporation which takes place  on the surface of the waterways connected to lake St. Lucia and the St. Lucia estuary systems. When trying to explain how the St. Lucia estuary system should be functioning as a breeding ground for many marine fish species, the current situation confuses most folks, and they battle to understand the connections between water flow and phytoplankton as the primary food source at the extreme base of the food chain.

Phytoplankton does not do very well in standing water, and also prefers a mix of fresh  or sweet water and sea or salt water. Phytoplankton is the primary diet of Zooplankton, and zoo plankton is the second tier in the food chain.  So the fact that the St. Lucia estuary is closed, and there is no sea water mixing with the fresh water from the Umfolozi and other rivers in the Greater St. Lucia Wetlands Park, means that the base of the food chain within lake St. Lucia and the St. Lucia estuary system is dysfunctional and not really able to support  the current biological load within the many different bio zones of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

Very few of the folks that I speak to here in the streets of St. Lucia actually connect the dots between the food chain in the estuary and the food chain in the terrestrial areas adjacent to Lake St. Lucia and the St. Lucia Estuary system, or the food chain on our offshore reefs which have just recently been included in brand new MPA's  ( Marine Protected Areas )

Now that these new areas are protected to conserve our fish stocks,  I am truly Confuckumalated, because there is NO mention of JUVENILE RECRUITMENT that I could find.  Most of the fish species that these new legislations are attempting to protect are dependant on a functioning estuary for their breeding and the protection of their fry, before they are big enough to venture out into the ocean and populate our off shore reefs. Many of the reef fish in the new MPA's also consume biological bio mass connected to a functioning estuary such as prawns, crabs and the juvenile fish of many different species of fish and other marine species that breed and mature within the safety of the reed  beds, mangrove swamps and other safe havens encountered in Lake St. Lucia, the St. Lucia estuary system and surrounding waterways.

So taking into account that there are no juvenile fish entering the St. Lucia estuary and lake systems, and that the ocean is not connected to the St. Lucia estuary system, you are truly wasting your ti me, effort and financial resources if you go fishing in the St. Lucia estuary
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Once again, thanx for reading here...

Please support the 4u2fish campaign by speaking about these problems and asking others to read and comment here.  If you are in a financially positive situation and want to donate to our  cause  then click here

Hash tags relevant to this post
#ReviveStLucia
#Frankie2Socks
#BierpensTV
#whalewatching
#4u2fish

The 4u2fish campaign needs your help

The 4u2fish campaign was brought to life with the intentions of creating a collection of politically acceptable platforms to tackle the many thorny issues around consumptive tourism within Umkhanyakude.  Now consumptive tourism is just a fancy way of saying tourism connected to hunting, fishing, harvesting of natural renewable resources and related àctivities.  Renewable resources is also just fancy terminology for wild life, fish, and the natural resources used within the local arts and crafts industry.

Help the 4u2fish campaign

Fishing, hunting and collecting natural resources are for some strange reasons,  seen as bad and unsavory pass times, which should be avoided, and thus the folks doing the hunting, fishing and harvesting of other natural renewable resources get an awful lot of bad or negative publicity. The 4u2fish team will have a primary focus on fishing and fishing related issues, but the stories around hunting and collecting of natural renewable resources used in the manufacture of arts and crafts will not be neglected, as this is a very important part, and a large one at that, of the Umkhanyakude district municipality's income generating base. The so called 4x4 ban ( #4x4ban ) changed this, when more than 20 000 job losses within the domestic tourism industry nearly bankrupted the Elephant coast tourism industry.

In the past, the Fisher folks, and their associated crews formed the çore base of the Umkhanyakude district municipality's tourism base.  These are the folks who put bums in beds, purchased arts and crafts, and generally kept the Maputuland tourism businesses afloat and making profit. The Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park Authority and its successor the IWPA ( iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority ) systematically and methodically changed the composition of this once very lucrative tourism market, and ensured that domestic tourism within Umkhanyakude collapsed and became insignificant.

Name changes and the restructuring of the management entities within Umkhanyakude has also contributed significantly to the economic collapse of our local and domestic tourism base. The Maputuland Coast became the Elephant Coast, then the same area became the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, causing confusion within the marketing industry. At the same time the iSimangaliso Wetland park Authority bullied  the local municipalities into submission, and then assumed many roles that should be managed and implemented by the local municipalities management teams.

This strategy has allowed the IWPA to do many nasty things, and the one that we as the 4u2fish management team are most worried about is the blatant mismanagement of the St. Lucia estuary and associated waterways. The knock on impact of a non functional estuary is rather disturbing, and extremely far reaching.  Whole communities have lost their source of income and can no longer sustain their lifestyles. The fish, prawns, reeds, grasses and other natural renewable resources are no longer available for domestic consumption, forcing folks to take other  survival strategies, becoming criminals in the process, due to protective legislations put in place by the IWPA.

 
Help the 4u2fish campaign  your financial contribution will allow the 4u2fish campaign to take up these issues at all levels.

Sea water flow issues in the St. lucia Estuary, KZN South Africa

St. Lucia estuary is in a very seriously degraded state. The IWPA or iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority are the government-appointed body that manages the Greater St. Lucia Wetlands Park in terms of the World Heritage Convention act.

This region was declared a World Heritage site in December 1999, and later renamed as the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, or the IWP,    the IWPA has been mandated by the government to manage the IWPWHS ( iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage Site)  and as such, this is the authority that is responsible for the ecological functioning of the IWPWHS, as well as the tourism business generated through the fact that the area is a World Heritage site.

The ICMA or integrated Coastal Management  Act mandates the state to have an estuary management plan in place for each estuary, and dictates who is responsible for the implementation of this plan.  the current situation is that this plan is not clearly attributed to any speific body to implement,  and we as local residents within the St. Lucia area have no idea who to turn to solve our problems that come along with an ecologically degraded and non-functional estuarine environment. 

In my opinion, the IWPA has failed us, and we need serious government intervention to fix the problems caused by no seawater flowing in and out of the St. Lucia estuarine system as the ocean tides change.   this is due to many factors, with the current drought conditions being the major driver of these problems.

#FRANKIE2SOCKS Has done a little digging and some research producing this report for us at the #4u2fish  blog.