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Status of marine pollution research in

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Natalie Degger

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 Marine Pollution Bulletin xxx (2012) xxx–xxx

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Marine Pollution Bulletin

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul

Baseline

Status of marine pollution research in South Africa (1960–present)

V. Wepener a,⇑, N. Degger a,b
a
Centre for Aquatic Research, Department of Zoology, University of Johannesburg, P.O. Box 524, Auckland Park 2006, South Africa
b
School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: The published literature on marine pollution monitoring research in South Africa from 1960 to present
Metals was evaluated. There has been a general decline in the number of papers from the 1980s and this can
Organics be linked to the absence of a marine pollution monitoring programme in South Africa. General trends
Mussel watch observed were that contaminant exposure monitoring of metals predominates the research conducted
Legislation
to date. Monitoring results indicate that there has been a general decrease in metal concentrations in
Research needs
South African coastal waters and concentrations of metals and most organics in mussels are lower than
in other industrialised nations. This is reflected in the general pristine nature and high biodiversity of the
South African coastline. The establishment of a national marine pollution monitoring framework would
stimulate marine pollution research.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Attwood et al. (2002) describe the South African marine envi-
ronment as a rich and diverse national asset which provides eco-
nomic and social opportunities. According to Taljaard et al.
(2006), approximately 30% of South Africa’s population reside
along the coastline, which has encouraged extensive urbanisation
and industrialisation of many coastal areas. This rapid transforma-
tion undoubtedly brings with it increased anthropogenic-derived
waste and xenobiotics which find their way into the marine eco-
system (Greenfield et al., 2011). This, coupled with the popula-
tion’s reliance on the marine environment for resources,
products, transportation and economic gain, has placed pressure
on South Africa’s marine ecosystems (Taljaard et al., 2006; DEAT,
2008). Furthermore, the sustainable use and management of these
coastal resources is important to the country’s future development
(DEAT, 2008). While the creation of marine conservation aware-
ness has received high priority in South Africa, the current lack
of marine pollution research in South Africa hinders these efforts.
By virtue of its position at the southern tip of Africa, the seawa-
ter temperatures and therefore processes along the South African
coastline are influenced by two ocean currents, i.e. the Benguela
and Agulhas currents (De Villiers and Hodgson, 1999). The water
temperatures divide the coastline into three climatic/biogeo-
graphic regions, i.e. along the east coast a subtropical region and
warm temperate region and on the west coast a cool temperate re-
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +27 11 559 3373; fax: +27 11 559 2286.
E-mail address: victorw@uj.ac.za (V. Wepener).
gion (Fig. 1). This gives rise to the western cold region of the coast
being subjected to large scale upwelling, while the eastern sea-
board contains 90% of the estuaries that drain freshwater basins
to the ocean (Allanson et al., 1999). From the assessment of the
west coast of southern Africa (Boyer et al., 2000) and the Indian
Ocean (Sheppard, 2001), which forms part of the Seas at the Mil-
lennium series, the environmental challenges facing these regions
are evidently the result of the influence of the ocean currents. The
upwelling of cool, nutrient rich water is the main reason for the
establishment of a large scale fishing and mariculture industry
along the coast, but the region is also prone to algae blooms (red
and brown tides) with consequent effects (Probyn et al., 2001).
The east coast of South Africa supports a high density coastal pop-
ulation, with the result that waste such as nutrients (Wepener,
2007) and pollutants (Orr et al., 2008) enter the ocean through
the large numbers of estuaries with consequent threats to compo-
nents of the marine ecosystem such as fish populations (Whitfield
and Cowan, 2010). This region is also more susceptible to global
environmental issues such as climate change with resulting influ-
ences on marine ecosystems such as coral reef bleaching (Schleyer
et al., 2008; McClanahan et al., 2011) and changes in marine biodi-
versity (Chown, 2010). Notwithstanding these challenges, the
South African marine ecosystem is still regarded as relatively pris-
tine, supporting a high degree of biodiversity (Griffiths et al., 2010).
It is therefore all the more important to assess, monitor and predict
the impacts that pollutants have had and may have in future on the
marine ecosystem in South Africa. In this paper, we aim to provide
an overview of the past, current and future status of marine pollu-
tion monitoring in South Africa.

0025-326X/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.05.037

Please cite this article in press as: Wepener, V., Degger, N. Status of marine pollution research in South Africa (1960–present). Mar. Pollut. Bull. (2012),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.05.037
2 V. Wepener, N. Degger / Marine Pollution Bulletin xxx (2012) xxx–xxx

Fig. 1. Map showing the distribution of the three climatic/biogeographical zones along the South African coastline based on water temperatures.

2. Approach were largely neglected (Fig. 2). The majority of the initial studies
that were undertaken between 1960 and 1980 can be regarded
Primary data for this review were sourced in the same manner as exposure assessments, which were related to the determination
described by O’Donoghue and Marshall (2003) who undertook an of levels of contaminants in sediments and biota along the South
extensive review of available literature on marine pollution studies African coastline. From the 1980s onwards just under 50% of the
in South Africa between 1960 and 2003. To supplement the exist- studies dealt with some form of biological effects measurement
ing literature data base, the scientific literature and readily avail- relating exposure to biological responses.
able grey literature were searched from 2003 to present, using A large array of different contaminants has been measured,
SCOPUS and Current Contents search engines. The same key terms with the earlier literature (1960–1980) dealing with the lesser
used by O’Donoghue and Marshall (2003), i.e. South Africa marine, known contaminants such as thermal, plastic debris, radioactivity
estuarine, coast, pollution, chemical, storm water, outfall, sedi- and microbiology (O’Donoghue and Marshall, 2003). The three
ment, sewerage, nutrients, microbial, bacterial, metal, zinc, mer- main classes of contaminants that have been monitored are dis-
cury, cadmium, copper, lead, tin, radioactive, nuclear, thermal, cussed in more detail.
litter, organics, oil, petroleum, DDT, dieldrin, PCB, organochlorine,
bioaccumulation, biomonitoring, bioindication and ecotoxicology
were applied for this study. Wildcard characters with truncated as-
pects of the keywords were used to capture all variations of the re-
quired search terms. In addition to the original 284 references a
surprisingly small number of additional references (38) were
added to the database. Information on the type of pollutant, the re-
gion in which the monitoring was undertaken, the type of monitor-
ing (i.e. exposure or effects monitoring) and the year monitoring
was undertaken were recorded for the purposes of this review.

3. History of marine pollution monitoring in South Africa

A meta-analysis of the literature provided by O’Donoghue and

Marshall (2003) and for this study revealed that marine pollution
monitoring in South Africa spans a period of 40 years during which Fig. 2. Distribution of the number of published papers and available grey literature
the initial years are characterised by a bloom period during the on marine pollution research between 1960 and 2012. A distinction is made
1970s–1980s, followed by a 20 period where pollution studies between papers on contaminant exposure and contaminant effects.

Please cite this article in press as: Wepener, V., Degger, N. Status of marine pollution research in South Africa (1960–present). Mar. Pollut. Bull. (2012),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.05.037
 V. Wepener, N. Degger / Marine Pollution Bulletin xxx (2012) xxx–xxx
3.1. Oil pollution
According to Moldan and Jackson (2005), South Africa is situ-
ated on one of the world’s busiest shipping routes and some 28%
of the oil exports from the Middle East pass around the Cape of
Good Hope. This inevitability means that the South African coast-
line is a global hotspot for oil pollution, and tanker accidents with
resulting oils spill are apparent. The initial literature on oil pollu-
tion along the South African coastline first appeared in the 1960s
with only four papers published, but increased to 10 papers in
the 1970s on diverse ecological endpoints such as beach meiofauna
and dog whelks (O’Donoghue and Marshall, 2003). The largest
body of literature appeared in the 1980s (20 papers) and was by
and large concerned with the effects of oil pollution on penguins
(O’Donoghue and Marshall, 2003). According to Wolfaardt et al.
(2009) the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus), is considered
to have suffered more from oiling than any other seabird species
globally. The reactive abilities of conservationists and scientists
to clean and rehabilitate oiled seabirds is a great success story with
over 50,000 oiled birds having been cleaned by the South African
Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds since its inception
in 1968 until 2005. However the only monitoring that is associated
with oil spills is related to determining the successful breeding and
integration of cleaned birds back into natural populations (Under-
bill, 2000). Nontheless, 27% of rehabilitated African penguins were
unable to breed following their release, and therefore Wolfaardt
et al. (2009) recommend that management strategies should firstly
be focused around preventing or reducing oil spills in the first
place. It is acknowledged that oil spills are inevitable and therefore
an early warning system needs to be in place to remove birds from
a spill area, thereby reducing their exposure the oils spills in the af-
fected area.
3.2. Metal and organic pollution
One of the very first monitoring programmes in South Africa
was the National Marine Pollution Monitoring Survey Programme
established in 1974 to assess pollutant concentrations, sources
and impacts along the coast, in order to establish a baseline (Cloete
and Oliff, 1976). From 1974 to 1979, this survey focused on identi-
fying sites of pollutant input into the environment, which lead to
the development of the first National Marine Pollution Monitoring
Programme to monitor pollutants and their status at recognized
impacted sites. This Programme focused on pesticide and trace me-
tal analysis in sediment and marine organisms. This was followed
by standardised protocols to be used in this monitoring initiative
(Watling, 1981). In 1982, a final National Marine Pollution Moni-
toring Programme report was published, which included data from
1979 to 1982, after which the programme was terminated. After a
three year gap in research efforts within this field, a data set was
gathered on water, sediment and fauna metal accumulation (Hen-
nig, 1985), to be utilised for regional and international comparative
purposes. According to Hennig (1985), this report and further stud-
ies were based on the Mussel Watch Programme developed by
Goldberg (1975). Towards the end of 1985, a new initiative was
implemented by the South African National Committee for Ocean-
ographic Research (SANCOR) and the Marine Pollution Research
Programme (MPRP) was developed by SANCOR as a framework
for pollutant research from 1985 to 1990 with the objective of pro-
viding relevant and sound scientific advice to authorities on the
management and effects of pollutants in the marine environment
(SANCOR, 1985). Post 1990, no pollution monitoring programme
existed and research initiatives were predominantly driven by ter-
tiary institutions or private consultancies focusing on ecotoxico-
logy and biomonitoring (O’Donoghue and Marshall, 2003).
Please cite this article in press as: Wepener, V., Degger, N. Status of marine pollution research in South Africa (1960–present). Mar. Pollut. Bull. (2012),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.05.037
3
Between 1960 and 1990, metals were by far the most com-
monly measured contaminants in South African marine pollution
studies, i.e. 44% of all the studies. While organic pollutants are of
concern, less information exists on the concentrations and types
of these pollutants in the South African marine environment. This
is demonstrated by the lower number of papers on substances such
as the 18% of studies on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs),
9% on other hydrocarbons and 25% on other organic substances
such as organochlorines. According to DEAT (2008) this is largely
due to high analysis costs. This, coupled with a lack of capacity
in institutions to analyse for organic pollutants has left a large
gap in baseline and current marine pollution knowledge.
More recently, a renewed interest in marine pollution research
has been rekindled in the form of exposure studies; e.g. assess-
ments of metals in water, sediment and accumulation in biota
(Mzimela et al., 2003; Wepener and Vermeulen, 2005; Newman
and Watling, 2007; Degger et al. 2011a) and levels of PCBs and
PAHs in mussels (Degger et al. 2011b), and a range of different
organochlorines (Schlenk et al., 2005) and plastic debris (Cliff
et al. 2002) in sharks. More detailed studies on the influence of
freshwater runoff on the input of metals (Orr et al., 2008) and pes-
ticides (Bollmohr et al., 2007) into the marine environment are
beginning to appear in the scientific literature. In addition to
land-derived runoff the influence of atmospheric precipitation on
input of metals such as mercury into the marine environment is
receiving attention (Brunke et al. 2010).
Effects assessments of metal and organic contaminants were
largely lacking during the 1990s and early 2000s, but in the past
five years there is a growing body of literature on the effects of pol-
lutants exposure; e.g. imposex in the indigenous mollusc, Nassarius
kraussianus, (Marshall and Rajkumar, 2003); biomarker responses
in the presence of metal (O’Donoghue and Marshall, 2006) and pes-
ticide (Richardson et al., 2011) exposures. In the 1980s there was a
strong focus on the development of marine toxicity tests using
indigenous species but these studies (and tests) are not used on
a routine basis anymore (Wepener and Chapman, in press). How-
ever, recently Stofberg et al. (2011) started applying sea urchin sur-
vival and growth tests to evaluate the toxic effects of metal inputs
into the marine environment.
4. Current trends in marine pollution along the South African
coastline
Although the Mussel Watch Programme, which is conducted by
Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) and the Council for Scien-
tific and Industrial Research (CSIR), exists in South Africa, informa-
tion gathered by this program is not made available to the public.
Thus far only limited results have been published in selected State
of the Environment Reports. Only recently Sparks et al. (2012) as-
sessed metal bioaccumulation data that were measured in the
Mediterranean mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis) between 1985
and 2008 at five sites along the west coast of the Cape Peninsula
region as part of the Mussel Watch Programme. These authors
found concentrations were highly variable both spatially (albeit a
relatively short overall distance of less than 100 km) and tempo-
rally (seasonal and annual). There was a general trend in concen-
trations of Cu, Cd, Pb and Zn decreasing from 1985 to 1991,
followed by an increase in 1992 but then a gradual decrease to-
wards 2008. There were significant seasonal changes in Cd, Pb, Fe
and Mn concentrations. The spatial differences were attributed to
point source release of metals due to different activities at these
sites. Similarly, Greenfield et al. (2011) found that metals in Brown
Mussels (Perna perna) from Richards Bay Harbour have also fluctu-
ated over the 30 year period since the construction of the harbour.
However, overall, current metal concentrations (measured in
4 V. Wepener, N. Degger / Marine Pollution Bulletin xxx (2012) xxx–xxx
2009) were very similar to levels recorded in mussels collected
during 1974, prior to the construction of the harbour.
Organic contaminants are not measured as part of the South
African Mussel Watch Programme but recent results from the
international Pellet Watch Programme (Ogata et al., 2009) con-
cluded that there was a high degree of correlation with the results
from other international mussel watch programmes. The levels of
PCBs and DDTs in plastic pellet samples from Durban and the Map-
uto Bay in Mozambique were low when compared to other parts of
the world. Such low PCB concentrations are supported by the find-
ings of Degger et al. (2011b) who concluded that PCB exposure in
the South African marine environment is low compared to other
more industrialised regions such as Hong Kong and North America.
The Pellet Watch Programme did, however, point out that HCH lev-
els in two southern African coastal sites were extremely high (i.e.
34–36 ng/g pellet) and that this could be attributed to the exten-
sive use of the pesticide lindane (Ogata et al., 2009).
5. Legislative framework for marine pollution monitoring in
South Africa
Through the Global Plan of Action (GPA), an international effort
was launched by the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) to actively address the issue of land-derived pollution
sources in coastal regions. South Africa was one of the 108 coun-
tries that adopted the GPA. South Africa’s further commitment to
the implementation of the GPA was underlined through the adop-
tion of the Beijing Declaration in 2006. The adoption of the GPA re-
quires national authorities to protect coastal ecosystems from
land-derived pollution sources through the identification of the
fates and impacts of the pollutants and the management and con-
trol thereof. As a signatory to other international conventions such
as the London Dumping Convention of 1972, South Africa needs to
establish a strong monitoring component within the marine legis-
lation framework. However, according to Glavovic (2006), the leg-
islation that manages South African marine ecosystems is
extremely fragmented. This is in strong contrast to the integrated
nature of freshwater and estuarine water resources legislation
where the resource is the legal persona in that the dependence
of the functionality of these systems on a minimal level of freshwa-
ter flow was given a legal status which had to be taken into ac-
count when any activities such as water abstraction were
contemplated (Borja et al., 2008). An integrated management
structure similar to the assessment and monitoring system that
ensures the maintenance of freshwater and estuarine integrity is
essential for management of South African marine ecosystems
since most of the waste that enters the marine ecosystem is
land-based (Oelofse et al., 2004). The South African government
has started to address this issue through principles contained with-
in the White Paper for Sustainable Coastal Development in South
Africa. With the drafting of the National Environmental Manage-
ment: Coastal Zone Bill, this White Paper has obtained legal status.
There is, therefore, a national responsibility to initiate a monitoring
programme that assesses the level of coastal contamination in rela-
tion to economic development. Thus, Taljaardt et al. (2006) pro-
posed a structured ecosystem-scale approach for the design and
implementation of marine water quality management pro-
grammes in response to recent advances in policies and legislation
pertaining to sustainable utilisation of Southern Africa’s marine
environment. These authors promote a system where scientific
assessment studies are undertaken to determine whether the mar-
ine environment is able to support important ecosystems and des-
ignated beneficial uses such as mariculture, recreational and
industrial use, through the use of a combination of modelling
and monitoring to specify critical limits and mitigation actions.
Please cite this article in press as: Wepener, V., Degger, N. Status of marine pollution research in South Africa (1960–present). Mar. Pollut. Bull. (2012),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.05.037
6. The future of marine pollution research in South Africa
One question which has been raised with regard to marine and
estuarine research in South Africa is whether investigations are
keeping up with global trends. Internationally, marine exposure
studies are focusing on measuring the levels of emerging pollu-
tants such as brominated flame retardants, perfluoric acids, and
pharmaceuticals and personal care products. The effects assess-
ment studies are currently attempting to unravel the dynamics of
the proteome and metabolome in marine organisms in response to
environmental changes based on research based on metabolomic,
genomic and proteomic driven research. This is considered highly
specific and expensive work and the majority of these studies are
conducted in environments suffering from anthropogenic impacts,
such as China, Japan and the USA. Currently, pollutant levels in
South Africa are considered relatively low based on a global com-
parison (Degger et al., 2011a, b) and it would appear that there is
little need for –omics derived studies or assessments. As it stands,
one of the shortcomings in terms of marine ecotoxicology in South
Africa is the high cost involved in metal and organic contaminant
analysis and the lack of capacity to conduct this form of analysis
on a routine monitoring basis. Not being able to sustainably under-
take such routine exposure monitoring makes it all the more diffi-
cult to keep up with emerging technology and techniques.
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