Gill net catch composition and catch per unit effort in Flag Boshielo Dam, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

South Africa, which is essentially an arid country, has invested heavily in impoundments to store water for domestic, industrial and agricultural use. Inland fisheries on these impoundments are considered to have the potential to support livelihoods and provide food security for rural populations (Britz et al., 2015). As small-scale fisheries are poorly developed in the country (Hara and Backeberg, 2014) and have a history of failure (Barkhuizen et al., 2016), it is important that future development effort be directed towards regions of high potential fish production (Britz et al., 2015). In order to guide such development, a recent baseline study used empirical approaches to identify impoundments in the warmer northern and coastal regions of South Africa as having high fish production potential (Britz et al., 2015). A major weakness of such empirical assessments, however, is that these assessments fail to consider the fish communities within the impoundments. As a consequence, Britz et al.

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