Secrets of the halocline by Professor Anthony Turton
Secrets of the #Halocline off #PortShepstone with Professor Tony Turton and #MYDO #Lures #TackleTalk
Good crew are hard to find so when Professor Tony Turton took the bait to go marlin fishing with me and Digby Smith, I knew to clear some memory. (Un)Fortunately, we had such a busy day that we only managed to get a few clips of not fishing in.
This is one of them…revealing the secrets of the halocline.
Tony has already got his shark fishing colours way down in the Transkei. He gave that up years ago. But a big marlin is still on his bucket list. We came close to one fish but the hooks pulled during the strike. The rest of the time we were dealing with shoal after shoal of yellowfun tuna (small ones) and skipjack. The skipjack were wild and they can really put up an argument. But between us we must have caught and checked back, about 30.
We did swim a skipjack live for marlin in the 200m area but it never lasted long enough to entice a fish in.
This clip features Professor Turton as he unpacks the intricacies of the halocline. Tony has studied the halocline and its effects on the estuaries on oceans as it moves in and out of the open ones. So he sure knows what is going on.
Underpinning the fact that free-flowing rivers are the lifeblood of places like the Protea Banks and natural phenomena like the annual sardine run. Sardines and other larvae and things eat the stuff that is in the brown water – it is all nutrients and stuff like plant matter.
This brown water feeds the ocean and balances out its acidity. The prevailing Agulhas Current disperses this massive food source down our coastline and ultimately into the southern oceans. Many fish and other small marine organisms like plankton, phytoplankton, and zooplankton, rely on this food source. And in turn, the fishies eat them. And so on it goes until we end up catching a nice big couta at the end of the food chain line.
Without functioning estuaries that work on the halocline migrating in and out of them, we won’t catch that couta.
More of this cool information can also be found on The Sardine News. Come fishing at umzimkuluadrenalin.co.za or fishbazaruto.com. Pop on over to our YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/@mydotackletalk.
