Why Sardine Run Reports Are Often Wrong

The Sardine Run is incredible for many reasons—but for me, it’s the people and the constant stream of communication that make it so dynamic. Every day, there’s a buzz.

Where are the sardines today?

Where’s the clean water?

What’s happening offshore?

It becomes a daily hunt to decode a fast-moving, ever-changing system.

I speak to dozens of people each day, sharing updates on dolphin sightings, diving gannets, shark activity, and baitfish behavior. There’s an electric energy in the air. WhatsApp groups light up, YouTube clips are passed around, newspapers run headlines—and stories spread fast. But mixed in with solid intel is hearsay, third-hand info, flat-out misinformation, and the occasional completely false report.

And honestly, I love it. It’s a mess—half-truths, wild speculation, and golden leads hidden in the noise. Who do you trust? Who actually knows what they’re talking about? What’s real, and what’s wishful thinking? That’s the fun of it. The mix of people—different backgrounds, different levels of experience, different motivations—makes it all even richer.

But here’s the hard truth: from land, you can’t judge what’s happening with the Sardine Run. Not really.

Standing on a cliff or a beach, you’ll see birds diving or dolphins moving past. That’s about it. Even on a boat, it’s difficult to interpret what’s truly going on unless you get in the water.

Gannets dive on everything—sardines, red-eye, mackerel, maasbanker, shad, and even strepies (which we confirmed this year). They also dive on current lines as individuals. From the land, especially through a long lens, it all looks focused and dramatic—but once you’re out there, you realise it’s usually just scattered feeding. Rarely is it a tight, static, diveable baitball.

The only way to truly know you’re seeing sardines is to catch one. On the Durban coast, where sardines wash up in the surf, that’s more common. But even there, things get misidentified. Plenty of baitfish look similar when you’re standing in the spray, trying to make sense of chaos.

A shoal and a baitball are not the same thing.

Shoals can be massive—kilometres long—and often show no bird activity at all, maybe just a few Swift terns tagging along. Some sardine shoals move fast and deep, making them inaccessible. Others can appear to be red-eye until you’re close enough to count the spots on their scales.

The baitballs we’re searching for are small, slow-moving or even relatively static. They last longer and stay in one area, but even those can be missed. The baitballls are all different according to what suite of predators are feeding and what the bait is. The most intense activity could be entirely invisible from shore.

The biggest, most dramatic feeding frenzies tend to happen in windy conditions. Gannets love wind—it makes flying easier and diving more efficient. They’re more active and dive more regularly when there’s a breeze. In calm conditions, they usually feed only early or late in the day.

Sometimes, you’ll see 100 gannets dive on a single red-eye or mackerel. So a big flock doesn’t necessarily mean a big baitball. But if you observe closely, their diving behavior does tell you something:

 • High dives mean deep bait.

 • Shallow glide-ins often target saury near the surface.

 • Fluttering dives suggest small bait close to the top.

 • Steep, erratic dives often mean speculative feeding along current lines.

Still, these are just signs—not proof.

Standing on the beach tells you exactly one thing: you’re seeing Cape gannets diving. That’s it.

You don’t know what they’re diving on. It could be sardines, red-eye, strepies, mackerel—anything. You don’t know how deep the bait is, how long it will last, or whether it’s even accessible. The dive patterns might look dramatic through a camera, but it could be 30 seconds of activity followed by nothing.

From land, everything appears concentrated. Through a long lens, it looks like a baitball. But that’s an illusion of scale and distance.

Even from a boat, it’s hard to tell what’s happening until you’re in the water—and by then, the picture often changes again.

So watch the reports. Enjoy the stories. But treat them with caution. Most of them are guesses. Some are hopeful dreams. The Sardine Run is unpredictable, confusing, and full of mystery—and that’s exactly what makes it so addictive.

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