Can you spearfish at Robberg Point?

No. Robberg Point is marked protected and the Robberg MPA restricted zone is no-take.

Is Plettenberg Bay sheltered from southwest weather?

Yes, the bay is sheltered by Robberg, but the point and MPA side still need separate swell checks.

Can I spear in the Keurbooms estuary?

No. Estuary spearfishing is fully banned in South Africa, and Keurbooms is specifically flagged.

What shark risk is named for Robberg?

The seal colony draws great white sharks and bronze whalers, so avoid dirty water and keep fish away from your body.

Do I need a South African permit?

Yes. Carry the recreational permit endorsed for spearfishing under MLRA rules.

Plettenberg Bay spearfishing forecast — South Africa

Plettenberg Bay · South Africa

2.5

💧 Water looks set to clear by Monday (~1d) — tentative

visibility1m

Today — sit it out — wave, wind and surge pounding. 💧 Water looks set to clear by Monday (~1d) — tentative

Sources: Open-Meteo · Copernicus — high confidence · data 06:06

Sources & confidence

Sources: Open-Meteo · Copernicus
Method: spearo sea-state engine: consensus of up to 6 models + satellite clarity (ZSD) + buoy-bias checks
Freshness: Re-read every hour, per coast

Compiled by the spearo sea-state engine · How it works →

The verdict comes from seven water factors and hard safety gates — not ten tabs. Go or stay.

How we score the water

Our own model

Our own forecast engine — not a third-party widget. It weighs these water factors into one go-or-stay verdict for this coast; the 0–10 dial is that verdict, read out as a number.

Swell & wave memory: Height, period and direction of the swell, plus the wake of recent storms — an old storm still stirs the water, and the engine remembers.
Wind & gusts: Speed and gusts, hour by hour — wind speed and an onshore push chop the surface and cut visibility.
Tide phase: Timing and range of the tide, calibrated per coast — big spring tides pull the verdict toward caution.
Water temperature: Sea-surface temperature — sharply cold water vetoes a green verdict.
Currents & outflow: Direction and drift of the current — it pushes you, and it drags turbid coastal water across where you dive.
Rain runoff & air clarity: Rain muddies the water inshore through land runoff, while fog and haze cut visibility at the surface.
Coast shape & exposure: How the coast faces the swell — a sheltered cove keeps the water clean; an exposed, head-on point takes a penalty.

Safety gates

Thunderstorm forecast — an instant red, no exceptions.
An official warning (MeteoAlarm / IPMA) — yellow, or red for the higher ranks.
Missing input data — a would-be green is capped to yellow rather than overstated.
Strong disagreement between forecast models — a green day is pulled back to yellow.
Night hours — where night spearfishing is banned by law the window is forced red; where it is legal (Australia outside NSW, New Zealand, South Africa) it is capped at yellow, never green.

It all folds into a single 0–10 score and one verdict: go or stay.

A forecast, not a guarantee — the sea has the last word.

Where to get in, where to hunt

Entry points with coordinates

Seabed relief — promising ground

This verdict — in your pocket. Open the app for the week's window.

Google Play — QR code — point your camera

0 m

Surface

Wind, wave and the swell windows — when to go and the best hours.

spearo.app

updated 06:06

Robberg Point (open coast) — solo, off the rocks

DON'T GO

don't go · wave 1.6 m (occasionally up to ~3.2 m)

wave 1.6 mwind 6 km/hsurge pounding the rocksvisibility ~1 m

today, best window 06:00–09:00

fish · Visibility 1 m · Water 18°C

confidence low · verdict for the selected day

Before entering, check the camera and the surge

Whole week — tap a day. is driving swell right now.

Solo risk: carry a float · tell someone your plan and exit time · doubt = don't go. A model-based planner; the call is made on site.

Selected day

Windows, hours
and the day's trends.

The day is picked above, in the hero. Here are that day's windows, the hour-by-hour map and the trends. Tap a window to break down the conditions.

Sunday · today2026-10-25

05:33–18:48 · full moon

▲ 02:00▼ 08:00▲ 14:00▼ 21:00 · 2.0 m

Hours (06→20)

Day's trends

Tide-0.76 m

Wave1.32 m

Wind4 km/h

Water19 °C

fish activity: moon overhead 00:00 · high · moonset 04:42 · moderate · moon underfoot 11:30 · high · moonrise 18:18 · moderate

Conditions window06:00–09:00

don't go fish

Hs 1.58 m · roughperiod 7.2 swind 6→10surge 11.6viz 1 m

1.58 mrough · up to ~3.16 · 203° at an angle

7.2 sswell moderate

6→10gusts 10 km/h

11.6pounding the rocks

0.11m/s

1 msatellite: water here is usually murkier

18°C5 mm + hood

▼08:00tide turn near

Atmosphere19 kmlandmarks visible

lowoff the lunar peaks

wave 1.6 m (occasionally up to ~3.2 m)
strong surge — waves hit the rocks hard
low water — slack

confidence lowtwilight

Open the seafloor map with entry points

More spots

Spots in South Africa

🇿🇦South Africa

South Africa map →

Garden Route

Eastern Cape

Western Cape

Feedback

Help us make it better

What's missing? Tell us what you'd like to see — new spots, species, data or features. We read everything.

Look at the water
right now.

Check the cam BEFORE you leave. Foam, brown/green murk, or waves washing the entry rocks = No-go. At night/in fog the cam is useless — treat it as «unknown», NOT «green».

connecting to the stream…

● LIVE↗

Plettenberg Bay — The Wedge to Beacon IsleYouTube live — Plettenberg Bay — The Wedge to Beacon Isle. Embedded live stream; the operator's channel carries several coastal locations, so we pin this specific video (needsLiveCheck: if the stream ends it degrades to the source page). Read the water before you go.camera: youtube ↗

What's in season,
what the law says.

In season now

yellowtail
Seriola lalandi · 3–40 m · legal
garrick / leervis
Lichia amia · 1–20 m · legal
geelbek (Cape salmon)
Atractoscion aequidens · 5–40 m · legal
galjoen (national fish)
Dichistius capensis · 0–12 m · ⚠️ closed season/limit
National fish but NOT no-take: legally spearable (35 cm, bag 2), closed 15 Oct–end Feb.
kob / kabeljou
Argyrosomus japonicus · 2–30 m · legal
red roman
Chrysoblephus laticeps · 5–40 m · legal
king mackerel (couta/cuda)
Scomberomorus commerson · 1–25 m · legal
elf / shad
Pomatomus saltatrix · 1–20 m · ⚠️ closed season/limit
⚠️ Closed 1 Sep–30 Nov (spawning). Don't take it then.
white musselcracker
Sparodon durbanensis · 3–30 m · legal
hottentot
Pachymetopon blochii · 2–25 m · legal

Law

✓You need a endorsed for SPEARFISHING (MLRA 18/1998). Buy it online (fishing.dffe.gov.za) or at an authorised office (SAPO branch) — check the current fee there. Own use only — sale is banned.
✓Breath-hold + snorkel only — scuba/hookah are BANNED (reg 8). Spearfishing in is FULLY BANNED (reg 16, no exceptions). Daily cap of 10 fish total. Inside an obey the managing authority; in several you can't even CARRY a speargun.
•NIGHT — the recreational spearfishing brochure (MLRA 18/1998) carries no time-of-day restriction: diving at night is legal. The permit, breath-hold-only, the blanket ban and conditions all apply around the clock; shark risk is worse after dark — that is safety, not law.

⛔ 🚫 Table 3 (zero possession): brindle bass (Epinephelus lanceolatus), potato bass (E. tukula), seventy-four (moratorium since 1998), great white / whale / basking sharks, sawfishes, coelacanth, Natal wrasse.
⛔ 🚫 All hard corals, sea fans and sea pens (Scleractinia/Gorgonacea/Pennatulacea) — protected. Seahorses/pipefish (Syngnathidae) — no-take.
⛔ 🚫 Spearfishing in is FULLY BANNED (reg 16 — no exceptions). Inside an obey the managing authority's conditions; in several you can't even CARRY a speargun (Sardinia Bay, Bird Island, Robben Island etc.). Abalone (perlemoen) — recreationally closed until further notice.

Rules change. Before heading out, check with the DFFE (Marine Recreational Fishing brochure / permit) and the MPA managing authority (SANParks / CapeNature / Ezemvelo KZN / ECPTA / iSimangaliso).

Safety protocol

Sets: watch the wave trains ≥15 min before entering; Hmax ≈ 2×Hs, the wash can run 50 m past the foam line. A lull >10 min with period >12 s = a big set «overdue», do NOT enter; enter right after a full set passes and re-check at minute 30.
Exit FIRST: find your exit AND a backup before entering. On a rocky/boulder shore a 0.5 m rise in swell can make the exit impossible — getting pinned/unable to climb out is the main killer.
Headland rip: prominent points often have a permanent topographic rip regardless of the model — locate it, enter/exit on the windward side, never swim against it.
Cold: wetsuit per the SST chip; the first shiver = a metabolic surge and a drop in breath-hold → get out at the first steady shiver. Cap the session at 45–60 min below 15 °C.
Solo discipline: buoy up; tell someone the spot and exit time; conservative breath-hold (never push it in cold/murky/surfy water); visibility <3 m — don't enter.
Afternoon wind: on many coasts the wind builds from midday — plan to be out of the water by midday; the chop builds — get out.
UV 11:00–15:00 (UVI ≥6): sunscreen and cover up on the surface interval.
Solo is a fundamental risk (hypoxic blackout with no buddy). Any doubt = No-go.

Spearfishing in Plettenberg Bay: spots, seasons and rules

Updated 2026-07-09 · By Oleksandr, spearfisher

Plettenberg Bay looks inviting because the Robberg peninsula shelters the bay from southwest weather, but the legal and shark context is central. The town side offers Lookout Rocks and Beacon Isle reef for kob, garrick, blacktail, and sheltered reef fish. Robberg Point is different: it is marked protected, sits by the Robberg MPA restricted no-take zone, and carries seal-colony shark traffic. The right approach is to hunt only clearly legal water, leave the Keurbooms estuary alone, and use the bay's shelter without drifting into restricted ground.

TL;DR

Plettenberg Bay is sheltered by Robberg from southwest weather, but Robberg itself has no-take MPA water and shark pressure.

Lookout Rocks and Beacon Isle are the practical town-side reef checks; Robberg Point is protected and should be treated as look-only.

The Keurbooms estuary is closed to spearfishing, and the Robberg seal colony draws great white sharks and bronze whalers.

Carry the MLRA spearfishing permit, dive breath-hold only, and treat uncertain MPA boundaries as restricted until confirmed.

Which Plettenberg Bay spots stay outside the no-take core?

The useful split is town-side reef versus Robberg restriction. Lookout and Beacon Isle are the listed hunting options. Robberg Point belongs in the legal-check column, not the target list, because the protected flag and no-take note make the fail-close decision straightforward.

Spot	Type	Depth	Level	Access	Notes
Lookout Rocks	Rocky ledges off Lookout Beach	Shallow town-side reef	Intermediate, watch runoff	Shore entry from the Lookout Beach side	Kob, garrick, and blacktail are listed here. Stay away from the Keurbooms estuary to the east, which is no-spear water.
Beacon Isle reef	Reef around Beacon Isle and Central Beach	Sheltered reef and sand edge	Intermediate with shark awareness	Town beach approach around Beacon Isle	The mark lists sheltered galjoen and kob. Bronze whalers pass through, so keep catch on a float and avoid low-visibility sessions.

Surface

Windows, hours
and the day's trends.

Spots in South Africa

🇿🇦South Africa

Garden Route

Eastern Cape

Western Cape

Help us make it better

The water column

A marine instrument,
go / no-go for solo hunting.

The seabed

The forecast is the plan.
The call is on the rock.

Where to get in
off the rocks.

Surfacing

Look at the water
right now.

What's in season,
what the law says.

Spearfishing in Plettenberg Bay: spots, seasons and rules

TL;DR

Which Plettenberg Bay spots stay outside the no-take core?

Wild Coast

KwaZulu-Natal

How does Robberg shape the conditions?

What fish are named for Plettenberg Bay?

Where are the no-spear zones?

Which national rules apply here?

FAQ

Sources

Nearby towns

Plettenberg Bay spearfishing forecast — wind, swell, visibility, tides & live cameras

Windows, hours and the day's trends.

Get the go / no-go verdict for Plettenberg Bay by email

Spots in South Africa

🇿🇦South Africa

Garden Route

Eastern Cape

Western Cape

Help us make it better

A marine instrument, go / no-go for solo hunting.

The forecast is the plan.The call is on the rock.

Where to get in off the rocks.

Look at the water right now.

What's in season, what the law says.

TL;DR

Which Plettenberg Bay spots stay outside the no-take core?

Wild Coast

KwaZulu-Natal

How does Robberg shape the conditions?

What fish are named for Plettenberg Bay?

Where are the no-spear zones?

Which national rules apply here?

FAQ

Sources

Nearby towns

Windows, hours
and the day's trends.

A marine instrument,
go / no-go for solo hunting.

The forecast is the plan.
The call is on the rock.

Where to get in
off the rocks.

Look at the water
right now.

What's in season,
what the law says.