The South African 3 000 km coastline has approximately 370 outlets to the sea ranging from small coastal streams to large permanently open tidal estuaries. The current state of scientific information on the vast majority of these systems, however, is virtually nil. As part of a national program to assess the state of South Africa’s estuarine environment, basic surveys were conducted on these systems during the period 1992 to 1999. This included ichthyofauna (fish), water quality, and geomorphological and aesthetic observations. Some 67% of South Africa’s ‘estuaries’ have been surveyed to date. This baseline data has been analysed and synthesised to render it understandable to the non-specialist but at a sufficiently high level to inform potential end users of the state of South Africa’s estuaries.

The full report is now available on the Internet in Acrobat PDF format. Click on the links below to open the relevant section of the report.

Chapter 1: Introduction  ( 32K)

Chapter 2: Geomorphology  (379K)

Chapter 3a: Ichthyofauna  (123K)

Chapter 3b: Ichthyofauna continued..   (124K)

Chapter 4: Water Quality  (81K)

Chapter 5: Aesthetics   (34K)

Chapter 6: General summary & recommendations (66K)

References  (22K)

Appendix 1: Strip-maps Alexander Bay to Goda estuary ( 996K)

Appendix 1 Strip maps: Goda to Kosi Bay  (1088K)

To view the executive summary of the report, click the Summary button below.To see the key findings, click the Findings button below.

Plans are under way to launch a fully interactive web site showing the state of estauaries. This will co-incide with World Marine Day on 20 October 2000.

Below are useful links to other sources of information related to Estuaries:

State of Marine and Coastal Systems| State of Freshwater Resources| Map of major rivers| Map of annual surface runoff| Coastal Management Policy| National Water Act