While the investigation into widespread sardine mortality continues, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) has not received any further reports of dead or dying sardines since 3 September 2026.
This comes as the department continues to probe widespread sardine mortality reported along the South African coast and similar strandings in Namibia.
The event began in the Western Cape in late July 2026, with reports subsequently extending along the southern Cape to Gqeberha by 27 August, and then to the East London area and northern Wild Coast, including the coastline between Port St Johns and Mbotyi Beach, approximately 60 km south of the KwaZulu-Natal border, by 2 September.
Similar strandings were reported at Langstrand in Walvis Bay, Swakopmund and Henties Bay in Namibia.
The outermost reported locations span approximately 2 600 km of coastline. However, mortality was not reported continuously across this distance, and the Namibian reports cannot yet be conclusively linked to the South African event until laboratory comparisons have been completed.
The department said it has received no further reports of dead or dying sardines since 3 September 2026, while no strandings have been reported along the KwaZulu-Natal coast.
It noted that sardines moving northwards during the annual sardine run typically occur in pockets of cooler nearshore water.
“The relatively warm inshore conditions along the KwaZulu-Natal coast may therefore have limited the further northward movement of affected shoals, although this remains a plausible oceanographic interpretation rather than a confirmed barrier to the mortality event. Monitoring is continuing, and the event cannot yet be regarded as concluded,” the department said in a statement on Sunday.
Laboratory testing has confirmed pilchard herpesvirus (PHV) in affected sardines from both the Western Cape and Gqeberha, supporting a link between the Eastern Cape mortality and the earlier PHV-associated event in the Western Cape.
“Taken together, the consistent detection of high levels of PHV in affected sardines, its confirmation in Western and Eastern Cape samples, and the observed mortality pattern indicate that PHV is the most likely primary cause,” the department said.
The department said the investigation has not supported harmful algae or the marine biotoxins screened for as the primary cause, although oceanographic and other environmental conditions could not yet be excluded as contributing stressors.
READ | DFFE continues to monitor pilchard deaths
Laboratory, pathological and epidemiological investigations are continuing.
“A small sample of sardines collected off the KwaZulu-Natal coast in June and July 2026, before any mortalities were reported, tested negative for PHV. However, because the sample was small and limited in space and time, this does not establish that PHV was absent from the wider sardine population at that time, but it provides a useful pre-event comparison,” the department explained.
Testing of other comparison samples is continuing.
“There is currently no evidence identifying when or how the virus reached South African waters, and no basis for attributing its origin to a particular country, company or product,” it said.
During a meeting on 4 September 2026, the DFFE’s Small Pelagic Scientific Working Group (SWG-PEL) considered available scientific information, including diagnostic results, mortality observations and estimates, observer information and fishing data.
Preliminary mortality estimates were scenario-based and highly uncertain, as they depended on assumptions about fish density in visible patches, the width and continuity of affected coastal areas, and the extent to which local observations could be extrapolated.
“There is also no reliable estimate of the number of fish that may have sunk to the seabed.”
While the magnitude of the mortality remains uncertain, available evidence did not indicate that it has caused a sufficiently large reduction in the sardine population to warrant a complete closure of the fishery.
“The SWG-PEL nevertheless recommended a temporary precautionary limitation on catches while further information is obtained. The DFFE has decided to implement the recommendations by the SWG-PEL.”
The SWG-PEL also considered comparisons with PHV-associated mortality events in Australia.
“These provide an important warning and useful scientific context, but Australian mortality estimates and percentage population reductions cannot be applied directly to South Africa because the survey methods, spatial coverage, coastline, oceanographic conditions, fish distribution and stock context differ,” the department said.
Warning against misleading mortality images
Meanwhile, the department has warned that photographs and video footage of unrelated mass fish-mortality events elsewhere in the world have been circulated in connection with the South African event.
“This may create a misleading impression of the scale of the local mortality. The October-November hydroacoustic survey will provide the first post-event estimate of sardine biomass and distribution.”
The DFFE continues to work with provincial and local authorities, Namibia, the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), Rhodes University, the fishing industry and other relevant institutions on reporting, sampling and monitoring. Arrangements have also been made to test Namibian sardine samples for PHV.
The department reaffirmed that PHV is not known to infect people, but warned the public not to collect, eat, feed to animals or use as bait any dead or dying sardines found on beaches or near the shore.
“Such fish may be decomposed or contaminated, and their movement could spread potentially infected material.”
As confirmed in the joint DFFE and National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications public statement, the mortality event does not provide a basis for discontinuing commercially produced canned sardines processed under regulatory oversight. – SAnews.gov.za
