Marine Protected Areas

by Paul on Monday, 9 May, 2011 4 Comments

The Andromeda

The Andromeda

The Andromeda is a commercial fishing vessel, moored in a slightly unusual spot, close to the aquarium. My guess is that fish are scarce and the crew have taken to visiting the aquarium to fill their quota. But, that’s only a guess.

South Africa has a fairly long coastline of 2798km, so isn’t it astounding that about 20% of our coastal areas have been declared MPAs (Marine Protected Areas) – stretches of cost where commercial fishing has been banned?

One day, but not right now, I’ll go to the effort of tracing all the areas on a proper map, but for now, here’s a link to a page on our government’s Marine and Coastal Management website – it contains a terribly-formatted list of all areas marked as MPAs. Sorry. :)


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  1. 1Ali
    Monday, 16 May, 2011 at 22:33

    it contains a terribly-formatted list

    Whenever I searched for South African data I made your experiences, too. :D

  2. 2kevin
    Thursday, 19 May, 2011 at 17:24

    What is the large red Lego looking thing behind the ship? Can you show us a picture of that?

  3. 3Paul
    Thursday, 19 May, 2011 at 20:43

    Hi Kevin, yes, sure, here you go: Red Coca-Cola Robot.

  4. 4Tara Booth
    Friday, 20 May, 2011 at 08:38

    Funny bit of trivia for you, SA coastline is actually not that long. Sure 3000km sounds long, but it’s only 6.3cm per person. 20% of the length of the UK’s coastline. In fact, when you calculate the EEA (Exclusive Economice Area) off our coastline and compare it to the total terrestrial area, SA is almost exactly 50% land and 50% water.

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