Hake

Horse mackerel

Monkfish

Pilchards and anchovies

West Coast rock lobster and deep-sea red crab

Two species of hake comprise Namibia's most valuable commercial fish: Cape hake (or shallow-water hake Merluccius capensis) and deepwater hake (M. paradoxus) which are demersal, living on or near the seabed. Cape hake is usually found where the depth is 100–450 metres, while deepwater hake favours areas where the depth is 300–1,000 metres. Cape hake spawn along the central and southern coast, south of 21 degrees south from June–August and February– March. About 97 per cent of the final value of Namibian hake products is derived from exports, mainly to Spain (61 per cent) and South Africa (16 per cent).7

Young horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus) are generally found close to shore and near the surface, while adults occur further offshore and migrate between surface and deeper waters each day.

Two species of monkfish (Lophius vomerinus and L. vaillanti) occur in Namibian waters, mainly at depths of 300–400 metres. They are slow growing and take about four years to reach sexual maturity. Monkfish are also known as anglerfish because they have an extension to their first dorsal spine that they move like a fishing rod to lure their prey.

Pilchards (Sardinops ocellata) and anchovies (Engraulis capensis) are typically found in shallow waters within 50 kilometres of the coast. Pilchard stocks in Namibia remain at a low level following the collapse of the pilchard fishery in the early 1980s.

West coast rock lobster (Jasus lalandii) and deep-sea red crab (Chaceon maritae) are two commercially valuable crustacean species. West coast rock lobsters are harvested between November and April when they occur close to the shore in water shallower than 30 metres. In winter they prefer deeper waters, up to 100 metres. The rock lobsters are slow-growing, longlived predators that feed extensively on mussels; harvests and their populations have plummeted since the 1970s. Consequently, the fishing industry has increasingly been catching deep-sea red crabs that are found far off the coast at depths of about 300–900 metres.

Bottlenose dolphin

The population of common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) resident in central Namibia is small, with fewer than 100 individuals. These dolphins grow to over 3.5 metres in length. They regularly feed in association with Cape fur seals.

Photo: H Dillmann

Heaviside's dolphin

Heaviside's dolphins (Cephalorhynchus heavisidii) are endemic to the Benguela ecosystem, and amongst the smallest of dolphins. They tend to stay close to the shore during the day and move offshore to feed in deeper waters (up to 100 metres deep) at night.

Photo: Namibian Dolphin Project

Dusky dolphin

Dusky dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obscurus) are found off South America, New Zealand and the west coast of southern Africa. They range widely across Namibia's continental shelf and are less easily seen from shore than the other dolphin species.

Photo: S Elwen

Southern right whale

Southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) spend the winters off the coasts of southern Africa, South America, Australia and New Zealand and summers in Antarctica. The 19th century whaling industry almost drove the population to extinction but it is gradually recovering and repopulating its previous range. A calf born in Elizabeth Bay in 1996 was the first Namibian breeding record for a century.

Photo: W Bruenken (https://commons.wikimedia.org/)

Cape fur seal

Approximately 60 per cent of the world's population of Cape fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus) occurs in Namibia. Although the overall population is stable, there has been a northward shift in its distribution in recent years.

As such, Namibian and Angolan populations are growing while those further south are shrinking. They breed in dense colonies on small, rocky offshore islands and at a number of mainland rookeries.

The five main breeding colonies, in order of size, are Cape Cross, Atlas Bay, Wolf Bay, Cape Frio and Long Island. The seals feed on a wide range of prey including juvenile Cape hake, horse mackerel and pelagic goby, as well as squid, lobster and crab.

Photo: P van Schalkwyk

The abundance of nutrients, and therefore fish and other marine foods, makes the Namibian coast a rich habitat for many birds. Coastal birds can be divided into three groups: species that breed and roost on islands just off the coast, such as cormorants, penguins, gannets and many gulls; those that forage off the coast but breed elsewhere in the world, such as albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters; and those that frequent estuaries and bays, which provide good feeding grounds to terns and wading birds such as flamingos, plovers and sandpipers.

This map shows the numbers of birds and bird species counted at key sites along the coast between 2001 and 2020. The most important onshore bird sites are the lagoons and bays of the central coast at Walvis Bay and Sandwich Harbour, which each typically host more than 100,000 birds in summer. The islands off the southern coast provide roosting and breeding sites for substantial numbers of cormorants, penguins and gannets.

Other birds that breed along the coast in coastal saltpans and estuaries include waders such as white-fronted sandplover (Charadrius marginatus) and chestnutbanded sandplover (C. pallidus).

Substantial numbers of non-breeding migrant birds from the islands of the Southern Ocean overwinter in Namibia's waters, usually foraging far offshore, and therefore rarely seen. These include up to 750,000 albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters. The ocean to the north of 26.5°S (Mercury Island) is particularly attractive to these birds.12

The Namibian Islands' Marine Protected Area, declared in 2009, spans 1,200 square kilometres along the southern coast; it is approximately 400 kilometres in length and about 30 kilometres wide. The area includes the 14 islands and several additional islets or rocks, some of which seemingly disappear during high tides; these islands and rocks provide sanctuaries to an astonishing variety of marine life. Seabirds and seals dominate the islands' land fauna.

The marine protected area primarily protects seabirds, specifically by safeguarding roosting and nesting areas. Eleven of the 14 seabird species breeding in Namibia breed on these islands and inshore rocks, including Namibia's endangered African penguins and 90 per cent of the world’s endangered bank cormorants. The area also protects the kelp beds around the islands, and important spawning and nursery grounds for fish and other marine resources.

Within the protected area, buffer zones encompass the islands. These zones are subdivided into four levels of protection, which confer strict protection for specified islands, sanctuaries for rocklobster and limit line fishing and harm caused by marine mining activities, most notably diamond mining.

Currently the Namibian Islands' Marine Protected Area is the only formal marine protected area in Namibian waters. However, six other areas within Namibia's exclusive economic zone have been identified as being of ecological or biological significance, and were adopted as such by the Convention of Biological Diversity in 2014. Of these areas, three are transboundary (Namibe, Orange Cone and the Orange Seamount and Canyon Complex) and three are completely within Namibia's jurisdiction (Cape Fria, Namib Flyway and Walvis Ridge). The designation of these areas requires that at least one of seven scientific criteria are met. Namibia’s significant marine areas all meet a number of these criteria as listed in the table below;16 many include interesting marine features (figure 2.02). Protecting these areas through conservation or other management measures would help stop the rapid loss of marine biodiversity in Namibia's benthic and pelagic marine habitats.