Curtain of death discovered in Ruimsig dam
Bittkau warned that the population of fish might dwindle if netting continues.
A recent clean-up of the Ruimsig dam adjacent to the athletics stadium sparked concern about the illegal fishing regularly taking place in the dam.
During the clean-up, led by Ward 97 PR councillor, Ralf Bittkau, they discovered that a number of fish had been caught in a net, which is deemed illegal on the dam.
The net, referred to as a curtain of death, is said to have been laid by individuals who were caught by legal anglers while in the act. It has been speculated that these individuals catch these fish and sell them to neighbouring restaurants.
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“People need to realise that netting fish is highly inhumane and illegal,” Bittkau warned. He also alluded to fact that netting is a nationwide crisis. “Netting is a scourge throughout the country. We have had major problems in Tzaneen dam, Rhenosterkop dam and Hammanskraal dam and many others where we pulled out a lot of nets… mainly the culprits are foreigners, usually Zimbabweans.
But we found in Ruimsig that the culprits were Chinese people whose intention was to sell their catch,” he explained.
Bittkau described how nets are laid in the dam or sea. “When you see these nets at sea, they can be up to a kilometre long. They are put down and hung in a vertical position. The fish swim into them and their gills snag, which is why they’re called gill nets, and they die,” he explained.
He also warned that the fish population might dwindle away to nothing if netting continues. “The big problem with inland dams is that they have a limited number of fish, far fewer than in the sea. When the fish population decreases, the fish don’t breed as they should, and eventually there will be no fish left at all. The dams then have to be restocked, and you have to wait for years for the population to build up again,” Bittkau explained.
He added that the incident has been reported to the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) to be on the lookout for the culprits. In an interview with JMPD’s superintendent Wandile Mrubata, Wandile told Northsider that they’ve visited the dam several times and haven’t encountered any problems as yet.
Bittkau said that a number of anglers are considering turning the dam into fishing club water in order to prevent netting and illegal fishing. They propose to install cameras in order to keep an eye on the dam. He also explained that these anglers are ‘catch and releasers’, meaning that they don’t keep what they catch – they put the fish back in the water. He said they do not have a problem with the residents of the informal settlement close by who catch fish to take home.
“A lot of the fishermen that come here only catch and release – they look after the population. We have people coming from the informal settlement as well, and I don’t mind them coming around and throwing their rods in to fish for eating. However, we also try to educate them, explaining that there is a certain size of fish that they can safely catch without damaging the population. They should not catch the small or the very big fish, because we want the small ones to grow and the big ones to breed,” he explained.
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