Illegal fishing costs billions

Explanations have yet to be furnished for relaxed vigilance as illegal fishing continues unabated, at a cost to South Africa of some R6 billion a year. A commissioned study for the Institute for Security Studies by fisheries advisory firm Feike comes up with some disconcerting findings. One of these is that hake, a prime export accounting for about half the wealth of the country’s commercial fisheries, is in crisis. Titled ‘Contextualised Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported fishing of Marine Resources in South African Waters’, the report points out that the hake quota for South African waters was cut by 14% from 2005 to 2007, at a cost to the hake industry of about R300 million. Changing environmental conditions in the Benguela current aside, the report says Namibian hake stocks, probably related to those in South Africa, have been “plundered” by the Spanish and South Africans for decades and now “all but collapsed”. While South African law excludes foreign fishing vessels from obtaining quotas, the Spanish are hard at it. Apparently they establish joint agreements with small quota holders who are paid by the Spanish for their consideration. What is more, the report reveals the real average mass of hake landed in the port of Cape Town is not disclosed to authorities. It is also standard practice for Spanish vessels to keep two logbooks, one for the authorities, the other revealing the actual catch. Disconcerting too is that the Department of Environmental Affairs disbanded the Marines, an anti-poaching unit with a conviction success rate of 80%, and allowed a number of Spanish vessels owned by convicted poacher, Manuel Martinez, into the hake industry in 2007.