Crumbling walls: mapping for marine equity in South Africa

Written by Brian Palmer, MPAtlas Researcher at the Marine Conservation Institute

Traces of the crumbled walls of a former fish trap in Struisbaai. The traps supported fishing families on days when seas were too rough for boat-based operations before the traditional technology was banned during apartheid. © Brian Palmer

Places mapped in the mind

The fishers I spoke with in South Africa’s Cape Agulhas region have a strong sense of place, but feel they are losing the places they cherish. They know exactly where to troll for their prized yellowtail. Once there, each member of the crew holds a line with a single hook as it trails slowly behind the wooden chukkie boat. When the yellowtail don’t bite, a common occurrence these days, the fishers triangulate cell towers with distant mountain peaks without the benefit of a GPS. There they find rocky reefs to drop line for lower value reef fish which they pull up hand over hand, maintaining speedy, steady tension. The fishers know where Forty-Five Mile Bank lies but have not been there in years, captains can’t justify the fuel expense now that the trawlers have taken so much of what used to thrive there.  

Some of the fishers know where fish traps used to dot the shore. They formed networks of arching waste-high stonewalls which created pools full of shoaling fish in the intertidal zone. These traps, or visvywers as they’re known locally, helped supplement catches on days when seas were too high and rough to take the chukkies out. Many have forgotten the trap locations, or were born after they fell into neglect, when the practice was banned [1]. However, many still know of the places where their homes were demolished by the apartheid government, recalling the grief of returning home from a day at sea to find pages of the family Bible blowing about in the rubble. With a big laugh they tell the younger generation of the place on the beach where their grandmothers showed them how to make sand balls to throw at the trucks terrorizing their families. All these places create maps in the fishers’ heads. These maps are meticulously designed tools they use to feed their families, catalogue injustices, and tell stories of agency.

As mapping technology is increasingly included in marine governance, the degree to which the fishers’ knowledge is spatially assembled will determine whether their livelihoods are preserved and protected or further marginalized and eroded.

A handline fisher pulls in a bream fish that is too small for him to keep. © Brian Palmer

Mapping policy pitfalls

While investigating a bid to declare a new UNESCO World Heritage Marine Site off the coast of South Africa, I saw how map-driven management was creating rifts in an already fraught conservation landscape. The country’s 2018 Marine Spatial Planning Act signified a prioritization of regulation driven by spatial data [2]. The Act was lauded by conservationists for incorporating best practices and science-based decision-making into marine conservation. Just as South Africa has the highest Gini coefficient (or highest rate of inequality) in the world, the inequities set into motion under apartheid remain cemented in place today reflected by a stark divide in whose knowledge remains unmapped and whose maintains supremacy [3]. The lack of value put on fishers’ perspectives was summarized by one in the Struisbaai community who said,

“We agree there must be rules here, but ask us, we catch the fish.”

My research represented an initial effort toward overcoming the gap between scientific and local knowledge by developing methodologies for collecting the perspectives of marginalized fishers using SeaSketch technology. SeaSketch is a digital mapping software developed at the University of California Santa Barbara with the goal of accommodating more diverse perspectives than are traditionally included in the Marine Spatial Planning process.  

Traditional chukkie boats wait in the harbour for favourable fishing weather. © Brian Palmer

Despite the detail of the maps that exist in fishers’ heads, many challenges revealed themselves in the process of conducting this research. By nature of their profession, traditional fishers are not inherently comfortable using computers. Only a third of the study’s participants agreed to engage in the mapping portion, while the majority preferred focus groups and interviews. Expressing frustration with processes that seemed needlessly bureaucratic, one fisher said, “The old people don’t want to fill in forms, you know what I’m saying? They just want to go to sea”. This sentiment seemed to derive from the labyrinthine, everchanging regulatory landscape, and the belief that even when fishers are consulted, their perspectives are not actually valued.

As our planet faces a multitude of daunting environmental catastrophes, it is natural to seek comfort in silver bullet solutions packaged in technological advancements. There is no doubt that technology like marine spatial planning tools will be integral in overcoming issues associated with mixed-use, marine resources. However, the defining characteristics of socio-ecological systems is their complexity [4]. Mapping technology has the potential to enhance our capacity to synthesize complexity but will require a concerted effort in collecting and including diverse perspectives. Mapping fishers’ knowledge requires overcoming intangible problems like building trust amongst communities that have faced subjugation under colonization, apartheid, and in the era of GDP-oriented neoliberal policy. It also requires pragmatic problem solving, like building map literacy among folks whose sense of place is traditionally derived from approaches that are more intuitive than technical.

Even with these challenges, my initial foray into mapping fishers’ knowledge generated valuable spatial data that was missing from fishery policy. These efforts of mapping traditional fishing knowledge correspond to shifts in South African marine conservation. A growing group of practitioners are understanding that the protection of nature will only be ecologically successful if it is socially sound. NGOs like One Ocean Hub and Protect the West Coast are leading mapping efforts in coastal communities and ensuring that the perspectives held by fishers are central in guiding the development of fishing regulations. Meanwhile, the motivation behind the UNESCO bid has expanded as it aims to establish a mixed cultural and natural site.

With an abundance of appreciation, I returned to the communities that helped generate my research and maps. I hoped to remind the fishers that their knowledge is power and to provide new tools for their ongoing struggle to maintain their livelihoods.

A map generated by fishers showing where they would propose to design a Marine Protected Area that limits trawling and supports the viability of traditional handline fishing. © Brian Palmer

Omissions in mapping

In my efforts to use mapping technology for empowerment in South African fishing communities, I learned a great deal about their limitations.

The power of a map is rooted in what it leaves out as much as what it depicts.

Map makers are limited in what they can represent in their renderings, given that their creations are, by design, a simplification of an infinitely complex world. Sometimes what is left out of a map is due to a lack of data, like the first depiction of Southern Africa printed by German priest and cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1513. The map is derived from the notes of Portuguese explorers and is an impressive, albeit slightly pointy, first attempt given the lack of data and technological limitations of the time.

The first map of Southern Africa made by Europeans. "Hec pars aphrice antiquoribus mansit incognita" emphasizes the limited data available to the cartographer. © Heritage Portal

However, what we see when looking at a map is a mix of ongoing technological limitations, the availability of data, and choices in what data is prioritized to be displayed visually. Imagine trying to navigate to a seafood restaurant while Google Maps is displaying all the geological information along the way. Many of us would be confused and distracted enroute. The rockhounds among us may never try that bream dish because the extraneous data led them on a side quest for igneous formations. In the same way the folks at Google Maps have prioritized information on roads and traffic, marine conservationists have long elevated ecological and economic data as the paramount knowledge types when making maps and driving policy.

The Mercator Projection, an imperfect yet popular visual representation of Earth’s surface, exemplifies how fraught the prioritization of certain data can be when coupled with shortcomings of mapping technology. When this projection was first adopted around the time of Waldseemüller, it was primarily for maritime navigation and thus prioritized accurate distances between land rather than the size of landmasses. The result is a map that grossly exaggerates the size of land closer to the poles [5]. The Mercator Projection has maintained supremacy in the five hundred years since its inception, still functioning as the predominant map in schools and on mobile apps. This has been paralleled by a dominance of countries and cultures that appear to be prioritized by the map, by virtue of their exaggerated size, leading many to criticize the way Mercator maps reinforce racist worldviews. Similarly, the devaluation of traditional knowledge in conservation has made it so local perspectives are largely unmapped, with the methodology to do so remaining nascent.

There are deep undercurrents of inequity associated with how mapping technology is used in marine conservation today, but exciting opportunities to do better. While marine spatial planning has the potential to further entrench imbalances of power, maps must be used as tools of restitution. To date, mapping technology rarely records local knowledge, and too often drives exclusion by drawing lines aimed at setting fishers apart from what makes them whole.

The barriers built during apartheid often seem insurmountable as ever in South Africa, while traditional fishing knowledge is at risk of going the way of crumbled fish trap walls.

Yet by charting unheard voices and embracing complexity, new technologies help create a roadmap for marine spatial planning that is both sustainable and just.

An example of one of the last remaining fish trap sites in South Africa that is still in use. Historically there were hundreds along the country's southern and western coasts, but only two communities have managed to maintain the practice. Mapping existing and former fish traps may help revive the practice and build resilience for vulnerable communities. © Brian Palmer

References

[1] Hine, P., Sealy, J., Halkett, D. and Hart, T., 2010. Antiquity of stone-walled tidal fish traps on the Cape coast, South Africa. The South African Archaeological Bulletin, pp.35-44. https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/24741/Hine_Article_2010.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y 

[2] Marine Spatial Planning Act 2018 https://www.dffe.gov.za/sites/default/files/gazetted_notices/msp_developmentofmarinespatialplans_g42444gon647.pdf 

[3] Hill, R., Adem, C., Alangui, W., 2020. Working with Indigenous, local and scientific knowledge in assessments of nature and nature’s linkages with people. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 43, pp.8-20. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877343519301447#bib0045

[4] Basurto, X., Gelcich, S. and Ostrom, E., 2013. The social–ecological system framework as a knowledge classificatory system for benthic small-scale fisheries. Global environmental change, 23(6), pp.1366-1380. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378013001350#bib0530 

[5] Omrow, D.A., 2020. A map of the World: Cognitive injustice and the Other. Journal of Philosophy and Culture, 8(2), pp.22-32. https://academicjournals.org/journal/JPC/article-full-text/4C9A4B365405 

[6] Stewart, R., 2023. The first printed map of South Africa - The Martin Waldseemüller map, The Heritage Portal https://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/first-printed-map-south-africa-martin-waldseemuller-map