Saldanha Bay Aquaculture Development Zone Storm Damage

I am sure that any of you who live in the vicinity of the Saldanha Bay/ Langebaan Lagoon area will have experienced the severe winter storm over the weekend and into Monday. Not surprisingly, as a consequence of the high seas, strong winds and huge waves, the ADZ infrastructure has suffered some damage.

Port Control has been informed and has been involved in retrieval and clean-up operations.

Three rafts from Blue Ocean Mussels broke loose during Monday and were moored temporarily at the ore jetty overnight. One broke free again during the night and beached next to Transnet Mining Dam near Spreeuwalle but will be retrieved as soon as the surge abates, the other two will be retrieved today.

African Olive Trading also lost one raft which beached near Blue Water Bay. Efforts to refloat the raft will take place during the next high tide.

Molapong fish farm did not suffer any serious damage to its cages but the rest of the farms suffered varying amounts of damage to ropes and floats. Similarly, some of the TNPA buoys and markers broke loose, all of which has been deposited on the beaches.

Clean-up operations have commenced and I will be receiving regular updates.

All farms which suffered damage will be submitting incident reports to me and I will, in turn, forward them to all stakeholders.

As ECO I will personally inspect clean up operations after they have been completed.

I will provide regular updates as and when I have new information.

Regards
Errol Cerff
ADZ ECO

We also received this communication from BSASA