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GEORGE NEWS - Every summer, as holidaymakers and new residents flock to the Garden Route coastline, a quieter and far more troubling trend plays out along our rocky shores.

Beneath the surface of popular intertidal areas such as Gericke’s Point in Sedgefield, the common octopus’ numbers are declining at an alarming rate. 

While harvesting remains legal under the current permit system, mounting evidence suggests that cumulative human pressure, rather than isolated overfishing, is steadily eroding the biodiversity and resilience of these fragile marine ecosystems. Without a shift in how we view and use our coastal resources, the very natural beauty that draws people to the Garden Route could be placed at risk.

According to the Strandloper Project’s Mark Dixon, a valid permit allows the harvesting of two octopuses per person. “What the current quota system does not take into account is the number of people who are harvesting octopus,” says Dixon. 

“Our surveys of the rock pools in 2019 would record between 20 and 30 octopuses at Gericke’s Point in the last week of November. In the second week of January 2020, the count was between five and 10 for a three-hour survey.”

Dixon says that in 2024, the late November count was between 10 and 12 octopuses, most of them small specimens. In the second week of January, the count was down to between three and five in the three-hour survey.

The Garden Route has seen a dramatic increase in population as people from upcountry relocate to along the coast, with large numbers settling along the Garden Route’s coastal region.

In comparison to the declining numbers and average size of octopuses surveyed at Gericke’s Point pre and post summer holidays, population density and size remain consistently high and larger at other sites. 

“Even the reef cover, flora and invertebrates are denser and more diverse at other sites, indicating the impact of the high volumes of people visiting the intertidal shelf at Gericke’s Point at low tide. 

“Both visitors and residents need to modify their lens through which they view the biodiversity and biomass of marine fauna and flora, and how their collective impact can lead to a decline of the very beauty and productivity that attracted them to the region in the first place,” says Dixon.

Overexploitation of intertidal species along the KwaZulu-Natal coastline has decimated intertidal ecosystems, and in many locations they have not recovered.

The solution

Only catch and harvest enough for what you can consume, and consider that you are not the only one doing so.

“In our modern-day, rapidly growing society, we have to think about the future. The South African population has more than doubled since 1994, and the Garden Route population has nearly quadrupled in the same time. Fishing records of shoreline species have declined drastically in the past 40 years. Let’s not have the same thing happen to our octopuses and other intertidal species,” says Dixon.

WATCH: Jeff Ayliffe speaks to Mark Dixon about the threat our octopuses are under.

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