A conversation with a man proud to be a fisherman, but who is watching the profession slip away from his community, posing problems of survival. For as long as he can remember, the sea has been in Travis Daniels’ blood. Born and raised in Kalk Bay, he grew up with the harbour and the beach at his doorstep, roaming freely between the rocks, catching guppies and abalone and swimming with friends under the watchful eye of a close-knit community.
Gathering was allowed, and you could feed a family that way. His grandfather was a fisherman, a skipper of a wooden chukkie, and though none of his sons followed him to sea, Travis – his eldest grandson – did. As a boy, he learned the rhythms of fishing on the harbour wall, catching mackerel and stonkies for bait.
When he became a teenager and wanted takkies and nice clothes, his grandfather gave him a choice: come to sea, catch fish and earn the money himself. It was a deal that sealed his future. “Once I got the taste of being able to catch fish and make money, I was hooked,” he remembers.
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“It was a done deal.” After leaving school and briefly studying panel beating, he walked away from the trade without a second thought. The next day, he was on a boat – and he has been fishing ever since. Now in his late forties, Travis has spent four decades at sea, building a lifetime of knowledge, resilience and respect for the waters of False Bay and beyond.
His story is one of inheritance, survival and devotion to a way of life that is increasingly under threat. I grew up around the harbour. After school, we’d go down to the wall and catch little fish – mackerel, stonkies, whatever we could.
If we had plenty, we’d bring them home, and my grandfather would use them for bait. That’s how it started. Later, when I wanted things as a teenager – clothes, shoes – he told me, “If you want takkies, come to sea with me.
You catch fish, make money, and I’ll pay half their cost.” That’s how he hooked me. Once I felt the rush of catching and earning, I was done. He was a skipper, worked his sister’s boat.
He taught me not just how to fish, but how to think about fishing – as a lifestyle, not just a job. He used to say fishing is about being in sync with the sea, knowing when to fight and when to let go. His kids never became fishermen.
He didn’t want them to because he saw the decline of the industry. But I was different. I was always at the beach, always at the rocks.
It was in me. It’s the adrenaline. You’ve got a shoal running, fish biting, 10 men on the boat shouting, laughing, arguing – “Hey, you got my line!” And suddenly it all just flows.
Everyone’s pulling fish, the boat’s filling and you know: today’s payday. You feel the wild animal pulling against your hands, because we use hand lines, not rods. That fight travels up through your body and it’s addictive.
That was hectic. We were trawling sardines on the Anjeri, a green wooden boat, and we got caught in a northwest storm with 12 tons on board. That’s a heavy load for a smallchukkie.
Waves were smashing us, water flooding the deck. We threw anything we could overboard to make her lighter, but we couldn’t dump the fish. It took us hours just to inch from Gansbaai to Kleinmond.
My grandfather always told me, “When you’re in a storm, you need to become one with it. If you fight it, you sink. You welcome it, you stay calm, you use your knowledge to get through.” That’s what kept us alive – teamwork, calm, constant checks.
One engine only. If it dies, you die. We made it back, but that lesson stayed with me: don’t fight the sea, flow with it.
Many times. And families at home don’t know either. They see the storm on the horizon and wait.
Back then, no cellphones – only radio. Every trip, there’s risk. That’s why I said earlier: you don’t know if you’ll earn, and you don’t know if you’ll return.
The quotas, the trawlers, the big companies – Sea Harvest, Oceana – they hammer us small-scale fishers. We see them dump tons of snoek at sea when they’ve overcaught, silver for miles. Meanwhile, our boats rot at the moorings because rights were stripped away.
Kids don’t want to fish any more; all they hear is moaning. They don’t see a future. If things change, yes.
We’ve got unemployed youngsters everywhere. Not everyone’s good at books, but many are good with their hands. Government could create schemes where older fishermen like me train them on the woodenchukkies, pay us to pass on the knowledge.
That’s how I learnt – from my grandfather taking me to sea. Without that, the knowledge dies with us.
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