South Africa
Marine litter—and its effects on marine life, beaches, and fisheries —has become a pressing issue for South Africa. The proponents underscore that the country has grown increasingly concerned about beach litter originating from river systems. The project will demonstrate how a 'Source to Sea' approach in five river systems in KwaZulu-Natal, can reduce litter generation and recover litter with river basin-wide interventions.
My professional career has primarily focused on human-shark conflict and shark and ray ecology, conservation and management.
Geospatial analysis and multispectral remote sensing expert, focussing on coastal and other landscape dynamics and degradation, and coastal climate change adaptation. Recently developed South African coastal and estuarine climate change related flood and erosion risk indices on a national level.
I work on demersal trawl fisheries of the western Indian Ocean and I coordinate the WIOFish Project which collates fisheries information for eight countries of the WIO.
Project Summary:
Shannon Hampton is the Programme Manager at IOI-SA. She coordinates the IOI-SA Course in Ocean Governance for Africa that runs annually. She is passionate about responsible fisheries practice and helped initiate the IOI-SA’s Small-scale fisheries work in 2016. She completed her PhD in a multidisciplinary study on small pelagic fish stock structure at the University of Cape Town. Her MSc, also at UCT, investigated the impact of flipper bands on African Penguins while her BSc (Hons) projects focused on inter-tidal invasive species.
Since 2007 I have been the manager and principle oceanographer at the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) node for marine offshore systems. I conceived the node and have grown it to a thriving, internationally recognised diverse team of multi-disciplinary scientists, technicians, students and project managers.
I have been involved in African fisheries for 33 years, first as a commercial fisherman, then as a Principal Oceanographer in a government institution in South Africa, for the last 23 years a member of Rhodes University, South Africa, and as Head of Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries Science between 2010 and 2020. I have experience in project procurement and in monitoring and evaluation, responsible for more than 90 projects in 201.