Hooked on snoek

By Le Roux Schoeman
Published 01 September 2010

Before sunrise, the Emily-Marié puttered out to sea from Sandy Point Harbour in St Helena Bay. That afternoon, 400 shiny snoek were offloaded on the pier. Ever wondered what a day in the life of a snoek fisherman is like? Climb aboard…

The Emily-Marié is a 15,7m fishing vessel. There’s very little room to bunk for the 12-man crew, but there’s plenty of storage space for the catch, which ranges from crayfish to tuna. During the winter months, however, there’s only one thing on the agenda: snoek.
The livelihood of subsistence fishermen as well as commercial outfits depends on the annual
snoek catch; some teams even follow the schools as they move around the coast.
But that’s just half the story. Once the fish have been caught, an entire land-based workforce springs into action: gutting, washing and packing the fish for buyers.

On days when the snoek are running, Sandy Point Harbour is the West Coast equivalent of
Gillooly’s Interchange: Fishing boats jockey for position around the pier, trailers reverse down the
slipway to pull boat after boat out of the water, and fish guts fly in the big green gutting shed. Seagulls provide a fittingly frantic soundtrack.

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