Our Coast was previously referred to as the Cape of Storms. The prevailing southwest wind is cooled down by the Benguela Current to the extent that no cloud formation can take place at this altitude. Due to the cold Benguela Current along the Atlantic coast the temperatures drop strongly compared to other areas of the country. The commercial fleets, he believes, “must change their way of fishing, change the trawl nests, change the equipment they are using to harvest the fish from the sea, because it is destructive, it is messing with our future, our community’s future, and just a matter of time before this bomb is going to burst out. The Benguela Current large marine ecosystem is one of the most productive in the world, and Namibia’s fishery resources have been of global importance for centuries. Flowing along the coast of South Africa, Namibia, and Angola, the Benguela Current is the eastern boundary of a large gyre in the South Atlantic Ocean. Despite the unpredictable and frequent volatility often witnessed on the surface of the ocean, the deep ocean currents continuously harness the volatility, delivering a … The Benguela Current’s thermal history was punctuated by events associated with Benguela El Niños and La Niñas. Now, however, the three Benguela Current countries – Angola, Namibia and South Africa – are working together to face the challenges and preserve the benefits presented by the Benguela. LME 29: Benguela Current Bordering countries: Angola, Namibia, South Africa LME total area: 1,470,134 km 2 “I don’t think there are a lot of fish left in the ocean now. Existing populations in many cases are today only a fraction of historical levels. Across the globe, 80 percent of the global marine fisheries catch comes from these ecosystems. The continental shelf near the Benguela is from 40 to 80 mi (64 to 128 km) wide. Since then, they have surveyed shared fisheries, reduced the by-catch of seabirds, sharks, and turtles caught by longliners, and proposed new marine protected areas. South Africa, Namibia, and Angola have a tangled history that makes cooperative management of their shared marine resources challenging indeed. Going from east to west, the story is quite different. Namibia's marine environment falls within the Benguela system, an eastern boundary current upwelling system in the south eastern Atlantic Ocean. Fishing down food webs, meaning targeting and depleting the populations of successively lower levels of marine predators, together with destructive fishing gear, pollution, and habitat loss from destructive trawling and coastal aquaculture, have all been shown to contribute to the decline of marine ecosystems across the globe. Places along the coast have a maritime climate (low temperature range) Benguela Current THE BENGUELA CURRENT is one of the world's four major eastern boundary currents. From 1957 to 2012, the Benguela Current LME #29 has warmed by 0.27°C, thus belonging to Category 4 (slow warming LME). It promotes the vision of the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem (BCLME) sustaining human and ecosystem well-being for generation after generation. The participatory process relies on sound science to generate political solutions and commitments to reverse marine degradation and resource depletion. Also on the to-do list was the reduction of coastal and off-shore mining impacts and better management of land-based pollution. In response, the GEF funded a second and final project to operationalize the Commission and support negotiations for a legal agreement, the Benguela Current Convention, among the three countries to sustain its work. Over most of the country, annual average temperatures range between the high 60s and low 80s F (low and high 20s C), although in the south the cooling effect of the Benguela Current may produce temperatures as low as the mid-50s F (low 10s C). Cape Town is known for its two currents, the Cold Benguela current which forms part of the Atlantic Ocean and the warm Mozambique which forms part of the Indian Ocean. All of these trends threaten the food security of hundreds of millions of poor people globally, people like South Africans Ivor Mars and Andre Prins.4 Ivor Mars has been fishing in and around Hout Bay since he was 12 years old and has seen the changes first hand. As with the Danube Convention (see Chapter 7), this binding agreement will provide the foundation for long-term cooperative management of the Benguela Current LME. change implications for fisheries of the Benguela Current region: making the best of change” held in Windhoek, Namibia, from 1 to 3 November 2011, organized by the Benguela Current Commission in collaboration with the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department. The meeting included participants representing climate change 5.2.2. They also provide a compelling backdrop for exploring how satellite sensors and creative data processing can reveal important details of the ocean. Integrated fisheries management for coastal communities' resilience in Guinea, Climate-resilient farming promotes food security in the outer islands of Kiribati, The sea is the future: expanding coastal and marine protection in the Philippines, Translating good science into sound management decisions for the oceans, A holistic approach for sustainable fisheries and a Blue Economy. The first step in building trust among the three countries was a transboundary diagnostic analysis of the situation in the Benguela LME. While the commercial fishery gets most of the attention from the local and national government, a good many people of Hout Bay and from communities all along the coast of Southern Africa also depend of the sea for their lives and livelihoods. The Benguela Current is one of 64 Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) around the world (the Sulu-Sulawesi Sea in the Coral Triangle is another). This phenomenon is known as “red tide” and is usually confined to localized inshore areas, such as off the west coast of FLORIDA. … Sector-by-sector approaches to economic development created this crisis, which is precisely why a similar focus on single marine sectors (e.g. It flows northward in the South Atlantic Ocean along the west coast of southern Africa nearly to the Equator before merging with the westward-flowing Atlantic South Equatorial Current. They are relatively large regions of 200,000 square kilometers or greater, defined by their undersea topography, or bathymetry, the depth and composition of the seabed, or hydrography, the productivity of their fisheries and the make-up of their natural food chain. It promotes the sustainable management and protection of the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem, or BCLME. The depletion of ocean fisheries and the destruction of coastal habitats constitute globally significant environmental problems: As much as 90 percent of the large fish have been removed from the oceans, and three quarters of fish stocks are fished at their maximum yield level, overfished, or depleted. In the past, inadequate regional planning and uncoordinated exploitation of marine and coastal resources has had detrimental effects on the functioning and sustainability of the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem. Influxes of relatively tepid water can have dire effects, such as in 1994 when a major invasion of the Angolan Current resulted in ‘red’ and ‘black’ tides of toxic plankton. At this northern boundary, the change is more dramatic, with cold and warm water meeting to form a thermal front along the coast. Marine ecosystem projects supported by the GEF use science-based tools to provide forecasting and recommendations so that stakeholders at all levels can adapt to highly variable climate and long-term climate change. Abstract. In direct contrast to this, there are areas of the Benguela Current off the coast of Namibia and along the Walvis Ridge in which there are no fish to be found. The Benguela Current covers around 57,915 square mi (150,000 square km) when using the continental shelf as the offshore boundary line. THE BENGUELA CURRENT is one of the world's four major eastern boundary currents. Africa. A key outcome of the Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem Programme has been the establishment of a multisectoral, intergovernmental body to drive an The nations sought to accomplish this through the development of methods to better predict environmental and ecosystem changes, the protection of biological diversity, and strengthened capacity to adapt to fluctuating climatic conditions that threaten fisheries. The Convention will enable the Benguela Current Commission to fulfill its role of marrying science with management to improve decision-making in fisheries, coastal management, mining, and energy. Oceans moderate temperatures along the coast, causing summer to be less hot and winters less cold than in the interior. They are not illiterate. They see things.”. The Benguela environment is highly variable, prone to large-scale episodic warming events called Benguela Niños, intrusions of warm water from the east or cold water from the south, and changes in winds and salinity. 15 December 2016, Swakopmund - Key ministries from three countries that make up the Benguela current marine system – Angola, Namibia and South Africa converged last week in Swakopmund, Namibia, for the commission’s 5th inter-ministerial conference. “It is very disturbing to think what our future is going to be like if the people carrying on the destructive fishing keep polluting our area,” says Andre Prins, who fishes out of Saldhana Bay, about 120 kilometers north of Hout Bay.