More than 10 tons of poached perlemoen confiscated this year
Ray Smuts
RAMPANT AND indiscriminate poaching of perlemoen (abalone) - a great, though expensive, favourite in the Far East in particular - is costing the Western Cape around R400 million a year but plans are afoot to combat this menace with the formation of 'Operation Perlemoen'.
More than ten tons of poached perlemoen have been confiscated this year alone which, assuming it had made it overseas, would have sold for $100 or more per kilogram.
The R10 million, two-year project, will comprise a 30-member task force handpicked from security companies and equipped with night-site video cameras, inflatable boats, diving gear and quad bikes.
A Marine and Coastal Management official said once the resource reached a certain level, not far off, commercial production would no longer be viable, translating to the loss of a valuable export commodity for the Western Cape
The Department of Marine and Coastal Management has disclosed that it is looking at a way of selling its huge stock of confiscated perlemoen without letting it fall back into the hands of the very people who removed it from the ocean bed in the first place.
Practice until a year ago was to sell the delicacy by tender but this ceased when it became apparent poachers were buying the stocks and making copies of the permits they had acquired to cover the export of additional poached abalone.
As to rich pickings to be had from the illicit trade, two Chinese thought to have masterminded an illegal haul skipped bail of R250 0000 and R150 000 respectively and fled the country after 30 000 perlemoen, many undersize, were found in a drying plant in a Cape suburban residence.
