A school of mullet were found washed up on the beach at Shearwater Bay in Namibia. The reason for the stranding is not clear, but could be in part be due to the high range in tides during this spring tide.
‘This morning [21 June] at low tide in Shearwater Bay we found a stranded school of mullets up on the beach (some still flopping around on the mud),’ posted Lüderitz Marine Research on Facebook.
‘They were between 16 and 18 cm in length, and the beach scavengers had discovered them earlier (two jackals, one grey heron, kelp and Hartlaub’s gulls). The white-breasted cormorants and Caspian terns were looking satiated and heavy and very reluctant to fly off, so I guess their stomachs were full of this bonanza breakfast already.’
Mullet populations are managed through a Total Allowable Effort (TAE) limit with a set number of operators in a net fishing area, according to World Wildlife Fund.
‘Increased illegal fishing is a major issue for management and negated any recovery caused by a decrease in TAE. In addition, management of threatened species accidentally caught is minimal due to poor implementation & lack of compliance by fishers,’ the WWF said.
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Image credit: Facebook/Lüderitz Marine Research
