Dictated to by the ocean's tides and the seasons, the fortunes of the Kosi River estuary kraal fishermen are, if not enigmatic, deceptively fragile at best.
Maputaland, on the north-east seaboard of KwaZulu-Natal, has hosted fish kraals for over 400 years. The first known written records of Maputaland were written by Portuguese mariners. The records date from 1554 and refer to elaborate fish traps on the eastern coastline of southern Africa.
Little change has come to the timeless fish kraals through the centuries in terms of the fishermen's relationship with their environment.
Conformity to nature's rule of maintaining the balance between demand and supply is strictly adhered to and respected by the small communities whose livelihoods depend on the estuary's generosity.
But change has altered the social landscape of the Thonga communities straddling the estuary's shores and only a handful persist with the tradition.
Wading through the estuary's tepid shallows, 70-year-old Mgobozi Tembu points out the simplicity of an ancient principle employed to trap fish migrating through the estuarine system.
"This umteyula (guide fence), is built in the shape of a hook with its concave side facing upstream. This stops the fish passing on to the sea and guides them towards the umdando."
Built at right angles to the shore-line, the umteyula is constructed from closely spaced poles secured in the mud.
Brush and saplings are interwoven between the poles to prevent fish escaping through the fence.
At the end of the umteyula is the umdando, a heart-shaped palisade with two openings.
"The first opening, at the top, guides the fish further into the umdando and through another opening at the bottom where they go through the ijele or second opening," said Tembu.
A circular enclosure, the ijele, built around the opening, is an elaborate structure of saplings bound with wild banana fibre and once inside, the fish are trapped.
Enough space is left between the saplings to allow smaller fish to escape.
"Fish are trapped during high tide. When the water is low, it is easy to wade out to the trap and spear fish in the ijele," says Tembu. Barracuda, mullet, kingfish, rock cod and grunter form the staple of Tembu's daily catch, which are kept to feed his family and the excess fish are sold.
"This is more than a means of feeding a family or earning a living. It is a heritage between father and son," says Tembu, explaining that fish kraals are neither bought nor sold but inherited.
"This was the kraal of my father. Of my grandfather and his father before," he says, turning for the shore with his catch beaming silver and fat in his wake.
Further along the Kosi estuary, towards the coastal lake of Mkhawulani, a similar method is employed, but instead of an ijele, a valved basket trap called umono is attached to the second opening in the umdando.
"We use the basket where the water is deep. Instead of spearing (fish) in the water, the basket is dragged on to the shore where it is easier to spear the fish," says Jele Jobele, who has fished in Lake Mkhawulani since he was a child.
Jobele says although he has owned his trap for 40 years, his sons display little interest in inheriting their family tradition. "Young men no longer want to fish. They are more interested in working in the city," says the 76-year-old Mkhawulani patriarch. Jobele is neither alone nor vaguely distant in his sentiment.
Change has come to Maputaland: tourism, commercialisation and exploitation have forever altered the region's future and present fortunes.
Communities too, have altered; adapted to the realities of a constantly shifting social and economic reality and the last guardians of their cultural remnants are rapidly vanishing from the shore-line homesteads.
Cleaning his catch of rock cod, Jobele comments on a reality that lies not too distant from the present.
"Once there were many fish and many traps. Tomorrow, there will still be fish, but the traps, and us, will all be gone," he says, sweeping his spear across to where skeletal fish kraals stand now abandoned to bleach and decay in the sun.
Tembu, reflecting on a disintegrating tradition, when asked about the future, answers with a patient sadness caused by a circumstance he cannot resist or prevent.
"I came to this kraal with my father every day. He also came before me with his. Our sons don't come here anymore and I am sad, because our relationships with each other, the estuary and fish are forever lost."