Millions of fish, believed to be pilchard, made the water of the Swakopmund Mole explode into a foamy, white mass on Sunday afternoon last weekend, sending people scrambling with bags and buckets to harvest this unexpected bonus.

Informanté was supplied with amateur video footage of this spectacle by Swakopmund resident Jens Detmold. It clearly shows the shoals of fish moving into the Mole basin and white plumes as they swam in movements that resemble schools of fish trying to avoid a predator. It is common for dolphins to horde fish into the Mole basin from time to time during hunting, but on Sunday no dolphins were seen during the fish run.
Marine scientists that saw the video footage said they suspect the fish to be pilchard, but also did not rule out the possibility that it could be mullet or juvenile (inshore) horse mackerel. The pilchard biomass seems to be exceptionally good this year and two weeks ago hundreds of thousands of sardine washed ashore over a stretch of nearly six kilometers on the southern shores near Sandwich Harbour. In this case it is believed purse seiner vessels struck a large shoal of sardine very close to the coast and in the process of pumping it over onto the vessel the fish were injured or killed and washed ashore. Similarly very good mullet catches were also recorded recently off the coast of Walvis Bay suggesting that the fish biomass is healthy.