We continue to hear disturbing news about catching of sharks and finning. There are so many people out there trying to educate the local population as to the long term negative effects of these practices. However when living in poverty the opportunity of making really good money mostly overrides all thoughts of conservation and preserving nature leaving us all with the task of education and job creation hoping this will slowly bring realization to the fact that tourism needs to be nurtured by all and eventually all will benefit. We strongly promote “catch & release” among our fishing guests visiting the lodges as well as strictly fishing for pelagic or game fish. These fish mature a lot quicker that our bottom feeders and are thus a lot more sustainable due to this. Bottom feeders such as Rock Cod or Grouper take a long time to mature and do also not live in big schools as we often find with the pelagic species making them a whole lot more vulnerable to over fishing and exploitation. The team at Megafauna in Tofo are doing a sterling job with their Manta and Whaleshark research. We have adopted a Whaleshark called Mafuta and we encourage our guests to get involved with this wonderful initiative. Megafauna have installed listening station on the sea bed in certain areas and I was fortunate to assist them in the installation of a station at Pomene point which is the northern-most listening station on the coast. You can follow them on their Facebook link at https://facebook/MarineMegafauna Another organisation doing a superb job with awareness of our marine eco system are “Eyes on the Horizon” who are also based in Tofo. Have a look at their link eoth.org to read more about their efforts. We encourage you to support and follow these organisations as they are making a meaningful impact on awareness encouraging responsible recognition and use of our marine resources from grassroots level in the local communities right up to government level.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 12:39:52 +0000