Blue Lagoons

"We, the people, have a huge problem, if we love our coast."

Let’s start with a hypothetical fish – say, a white steenbras. She pops out of an egg just offshore of the Groot Berg Estuary, on the Cape West Coast. Miraculously, she isn’t eaten during the few weeks until she tastes fresh water and heads for the mouth of the estuary, hard-wired to seek calmer waters with plenty of food.

She’s beautiful; silvery-white, and she has large eyes, prominent lips and rakish, swept-back fins with fetching flecks of gold on their upper scales. In the estuary she grows, managing to avoid the hooks and nets that came down from above.

After a few years, the sea calls. Following a winter storm the estuary opens, and she heads west through the breakers, into a life that could be 40 years long. Her kin have been following that path for millions of years.

So how does our hypothetical fish fare in reality? Not well. White steenbras are down to six per cent of what they once were. Mostly gone to the great fish shop in the sky: fried, grilled, sushi, fish soup.