Biodiversity monitoring in Robben Island Marine Protected Area

Cape Research Centre and Table Mountain National Park staff at sea during calm weather conditions in Robben Island Marine Protected Area
Robben Island is a South African National Heritage Site and World Heritage Site, as it is the prison site where anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, were jailed for decades. The Robben Island Marine Protected Area (MPA) is one of SANParks’ three new MPAs, declared with 17 other new national MPAs in May 2019.
Robben Island MPA conserves and protects threatened coastal, island and offshore benthic habitats, including threatened ecosystems, such as Cape Exposed Rocky Shores and Cape Kelp Forests, and endangered seabirds (e.g. African penguin, Cape cormorants), as well as overexploited commercial species like west coast rock lobster and abalone. The MPA also provides ecosystem services, i.e. food and biodiversity that supports fishing, tourism (including SCUBA diving), and research and education activities.

Fish attracted to the bait.
Unfortunately, there are several pressures on the MPA, including legal and illegal fishing, poaching, uncontrolled access to the MPA, and tourism. In February 2022, the Cape Research Centre and Table Mountain National Park staff implemented a biodiversity monitoring programme in Robben Island MPA using Baited Remote Underwater Videos (BRUVs). This was an extension of the work already occurring in the MPAs of Table Mountain and West Coast National Parks. The main objectives are to document the diversity and abundance of fish and shark species in the MPA, detect relative abundance of commercial species and species of special concern and to compare species richness and community composition between controlled (harvesting allowed with a permit) and restricted (no harvesting allowed) zones. Harvesting pressure is expected to affect the abundance of targeted species, which in turn may alter species richness and community composition.

Cape Research Centre and Table Mountain National Park staff deploying Baited Remote Underwater Videos in the Robben Island Marine Protected Area.
We deployed BRUVs 16 times across the restricted and controlled zones of the MPA. We were fortunate to have ideal weather, with calm and clear water and the kelp forest visible through the clear waters which made for perfect and enjoyable conditions for deploying the BRUVs. Cape fur seals and dolphins kept us company throughout our fieldwork, reminding us of the incredible splendour of the MPA. We recorded several species, including Hottentot seabream, klipfish, puffadder shysharks, sevengill sharks and west coast rock lobsters. It was exciting to see the broadnose sevengill shark (Notorynchus cepedianus) bite and bump the baited canister in the videos. This data, together with future BRUV surveys will be used as baseline ecological data to assess the effectiveness of the MPA and to guide informed conservation decisions.

Broadnose sevengill shark visiting the bait
This article was originally published in the 2021/2022 Research Report.