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Marine Research:

MINISTRY OF FISHERIES AND MARINE RESOURCES

Demersal section: Lobster research

Short report on the 2004 Sylvia Hill lobster & penguin survey (with reference to the 2003 survey).

The Sylvia Hill inshore reef areas contain the most northern commercial fishing grounds for lobster in Namibia. These grounds have not been fished much since the late 1980's. During recent years the Namibian government started to put increasing pressure on the lobster industry to utilise this part of the lobster stock. As these grounds are far away from Luderitz and rather dangerous to fish due to the close inshore location of the reefs, fishing is only possible on really calm days. High densities of lobsters occur in the intertidal reef area, which is very difficult to reach from the sea. A monitoring program consisting of annual dive surveys started about four years ago, during which a small part of the Sylvia Hill reefs are sampled by scientific divers, entering the intertidal sites from land. This means traveling with four wheel drive vehicles through the Namib dunes and camping in the dune field directly above Sylvia Hill. During each survey two scientific teams, one from Swakop and one from Luderitz, meet up at the Sylvia Hill camp site, from where various research activities then take place over a three day period. These activities not only include lobster research diving, but also collecting of research info on the local penguin and seal colonies, as well as on the resident hyenas. Reliable vehicles and experienced dune drivers are required to travel through the dune fields to reach this area. With the poor quality of government vehicles available to the Luderitz team and unavailability of experience dune drivers, we have made use of an offer from Gerhard and Elmarie Groenewald (from the farm Klipbokkop in South Africa) to assist us with this survey by supplying the vehicles and fuel, as part of a sponsorship by SASOL, MITSUBISHI and GOODYEAR.

The following report summarises the lobster research results from the recent March 2004 survey, in comparison to results from the March 2003 survey.

To read the full report, please click here. (Adobe PDF Format)

In Support of Marine Research Namibia	Crayfish Measurements	Brown Hyena skull	Brown Hyena sighting on Namibian Coast