Programme director
Acting Deputy Director–General, Dr Razeena Omar
Recognise Mr Cupido, MD of Anix Consulting
Honoured guests
Ladies and gentlemen
As I was coming along I noticed a notice board that says if you litter we will fine you R1 000. We really need to inculcate a culture of looking after our environment to plant the seed so that the environment can give us comfort even as we develop.
It is a pleasure to join you this afternoon as we celebrate our inaugural National Marine Month. Until this year and for most of the early 90s, National Marine Day was a one-day celebration during the month of November. It subsequently, in the late 90s, became a week long focus which was celebrated during October following proposals from the education sector, November being examination month and thus limiting the input and participation of the education institutions in this important calendar event during the month of November.
Recognising that we needed to highlight the importance of our oceans and the marine environment, on World Oceans Day, 8 June 2009, I declared that the National Marine Week was to be celebrated, with effect from this year, as the National Marine Month.
This announcement coincided with the announcement that South Africa is expanding the big five to the big seven, now including two marine animals, that is, the great white shark and the whale. Not all of us can appreciate the need to safeguard the environment and the marine and the coast, especially the ocean.
The ocean is important because there are plants and animals that we live on. If we do not look after the ocean we can have disasters like we saw in Indonesia like the tsunami.
It is a reality that fish stocks are declining globally and this poses a serious challenge to fisheries' management in South Africa. The need to balance the environmental imperative of ensuring the sustainable development of our marine resources on the one hand and the imperative of ensuring a sustainable livelihood for our fishing communities, some of which depend entirely on fishing, is a real challenge and requires innovative fisheries' management strategies.
It is therefore critical that a government-wide intervention in the coastal communities to address coastal poverty and alternative livelihood opportunities in light of declining fish stocks is implemented as a matter of urgency.
Ladies and gentlemen, under the theme: "From oceans, to climate, to flora and fauna", the celebration and observation of the Marine Month are a recognition of the important role that our country is surrounded by oceans and that oceans play a critical role in our weather patterns.
Therefore they impact on the kind of vegetation and animals that are found from the West Coast in the Western Cape to the Eastern Coast in KwaZulu-Natal. In this regard, through a variety of events from lectures, to school visits to aquariums and to a number of awareness programmes, we have sought to reach as many South Africans as possible.
The programme for the National Marine Month has therefore involved events in some of the smallest fishing communities, such as Port Saint Johns, to the big cities, such as Pretoria. In all the activities we sought to show that what happens inland, in terms of weather patterns is influenced by our oceans.
South Africa's different climatic zones, with its different biodiversities, agricultural and economic activities, are shaped by the availability of one of our scarcest resources, namely fresh water. Our rainfall patterns also dictate many activities as they are vital to defining natural habitats and ecosystems. Our country is characterised, in general, by a dry western half, a wet and lush eastern half and an area of transition in the South-Western Cape. Opposite to what we see on land, the ocean shows a different pattern.
The ocean along the dry west coast is the very productive cold Benguela system that supports large fisheries such as those focussed on the small pelagic (anchovy and sardine) and the demersal (hake) stocks. Along the lush and wet east coast we have the warm agulhas. Current with rich ocean biodiversity, but not large fish stocks. One of the main reasons for the lush eastern half of the country is that the warm waters of the agulhas current transfers moisture into the atmosphere that produces cloud and rainfall over the country in the latter half of summer.
In the first half of summer, the rainfall over the eastern half comes from a low air pressure system that comes from the oceans over the equator. For similar reasons, since the west coast waters are cold, there is no moisture to add to the atmosphere and hence no rainfall contributing to the dry western half of the country.
To the south of the country, there is a unique situation as it is the only place in the world where a warm and cold current meet. Because of this, it has given rise to a unique climate in the SW Cape that has produced a terrestrial biodiversity like none other in the world, namely fynbos.
Scientists have shown that our rich biodiversity in the fynbos has been boosted by the climatic conditions created as a result of a mixture of warm and cold oceans. The fynbos and other bio-geographic zones in the country can be linked to the warm and cold ocean currents that flow past South Africa's long coastline. These currents in addition to the cold southern oceans are key drivers of South Africa's climate and rainfall conditions.
The oceans therefore play a critical role in shaping economic and social activities along our coasts as well as inland, because it is the primary producer of moisture to the atmosphere that eventually produces rain over the country.
In the past week or so, the President of the country led a delegation to Hawston to engage with the fishing communities in the Western Cape. There is a directive that the President gave to both Minister Joematt-Pettersson and I to look at how we can as government in partnership with the communities, find ways of ensuring that even as we continue to appreciate and safeguard the oceans around the country, we also have to find ways of addressing the poverty that has crept into these communities as the resources are depleted and the fisheries are closed. We shall come back to these communities in the time that the President has directed.
We have now become aware of the impact of climate change on the coastal line. This has resulted in the erosion of the coastal line which is very obvious especially on the east coast area of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal. That is one more reason for us to look after our coast.
In conclusion, I hope that this new emphasis on the National Marine Month as opposed to the National Marine Day will help us as a nation to ensure that the necessary appreciation and respect for our oceans and what they stand for and mean to all of us.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Environmental Affairs
27 October 2009
Source: Department of Environmental Affairs (http://www.deat.gov.za)
