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The City of Cape Town informed members of the public to avoid all contact with the water at the Wildevoelvlei and outlet channel leading to the sea. Wildevoelvlei had a well-established algae population dominated by species of blue-green algae named Cyanophyceae . During the warm summer months, the algal population could increase dramatically, and this accounted for the current green pea-soup colour of the water. Shellfish such as mussels harvested from the coast below the vlei were likely to be unfit for human consumption as a result of the toxins. Exposure to the algae could cause eye irritation, skin rashes, mouth ulcers, vomiting, diarrhoea, and cold or flu-like symptoms. Drinking or swallowing large amounts of contaminated water could be extremely dangerous.

Two recent studies highlight a debate within the world of marine fisheries science over how to interpret available fisheries data and to determine the impacts of commercial fishing on the marine environment (see http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=commercial-fisheries-impact&print=true#comments) The global demand for seafood is high, and over the past several decades the harvesting of wild fish from the oceans has grown into a huge business. Between 1950 - the year the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization - began releasing an annual report of catch statistics, and the late 1980s the global annual reported catch ballooned from around 18 million metric tons to peak at about 80 million metric tons. Since then, the catch has stagnated, dropping to near 79 million metric tons in 2005. There is no argument the industry's massive growth has vastly affected ocean ecosystems, but the extent to which this disruption has depleted and continues to deplete the sea...

Measures introduced in South Africa to bring the unsustainable and illicit trade in abalone were never given adequate support before they were withdrawn, finds a new study launched on 16 December 2010 in the TRAFFIC Bulletin. Abalone are types of sea molluscs (known locally as perlemoen), in great demand in East Asia for their meat and shell. Overfishing and disease have caused serious declines in several species world-wide. Numbers of one species found only in South African waters, Haliotis midae, have declined dramatically since the 1990s, largely because of highly organized illegal plundering of stocks. The illegal fishing industry has known links to domestic drugs trafficking and Asian crime syndicates, with the majority of the catch smuggled to Hong Kong. In an effort to regulate the harvest and prevent unsustainable and illegal exploitation of Haliotis midae , in 2007 the South African Government placed the species in Appendix III of CITES (the Convention on International Trade ...

The Editorial in the Cape Times this morning (21 December 2010) is a damning indictment of the failure of the Minister of Fisheries and her increasingly incompetent and reckless department in managing our lobster stocks. As this blog has reported and re-iterated by the Cape Times Editorial, the Minister and her department are complicit in the continued destruction of lobster stocks which are now estimated to be at 3% of pristine by allocating a larger quota to the "interim relief lobster sector". Our lobster inshore stocks are in a substantially worse biological state than abalone. Instead of listening to her scientific advisers (who are the only professionally qualified fisheries managers left in her department) to not reward the interim relief poachers, shebeen owners, taxi drivers and the dead by increasing their quota from 53 tons to 200 tons, she is now the first fisheries minister in post apartheid South Africa to ignore her scientists. Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson c...

The Department of Fisheries launched the Marine Anti-Poaching Project on 14 December 2010. The project involved the training of 60 veterans from (predominantly) the ANC's military veterans wing, MK. Their training over the past 6 months involved surveillance, intelligence, investigation practice and risk assessment. However, while their training lasted 6 months, the project has a budget that will end in March 2011 which will mean that these ex military veterans will only be "patrolling" the coast for 3-4 months. We have previously derided the decision to use ex military veterans. However, given the desperate state of chaos in the department of fisheries, coupled with the growing number of cases of gross mismanagement, "quota" grabs and shenanigans involving the farcical interim relief process over the past few months, the comedy of deploying ex military veterans is almost welcomed. At least there will be 60 more officers patrolling the coast? However, on a serio...

The Cape Times today reports (Pg6 "Something fishing in allocation of interim relief quotas for marine poachers") that when the Department of Fisheries (DAFF) was questioned on the apparent incorrect catch limits stated in the 2010/2011 west coast rock lobster TAC document signed by the Minister, DAFF confirmed that although 53 tons was allocated by the Minister under section 14 of the Marine Living Resources Act for the "interim relief" sector for the 2009/2010 season, DAFF allowed the sector to "utilise" 180 tons! So DAFF simply nonchalantly admits to permitting a substantial breach of the Marine Living Resources Act and to large scale poaching of our lobster resource. What makes matters even worse is that documentation in Feike's possession shows that the west coast rock lobster industry association is of the opinion - based on the quantum of lobster that was caught, processed and exported by the commercial sector for the "interim relief quota...

South Africa's official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has scored the Minister of Fisheries a failing 4 out of 10 for her performance as a Cabinet Minister during 2010. In 2009, she was scored a 7. In the annual Cabinet Report Card, the DA states that "the department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries continues to bumble around ineffectively because of Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson’s failure to take proper control of her department’s strategic direction. The DAFF needs strong and visionary management; anything less threatens the sustainability of the sector and the country’s food security. Minister Joemat-Pettersson has proven herself to be neither strong nor innovative." The full Report Card can be accessed at http://www.da.org.za/docs/10712/CabinetReportCard.pdf

We had hoped (and prayed to gods) that with the official appointment of Tina Joemat-Pettersson as Minister of Fisheries in April this year and the removal of Monde Mayekiso as head of fisheries management, the fisheries branch (formerly MCM) would undergo a dramatic recovery as was promised by the Minister. The events of just the past month (let alone the creeping inaction and failures since April) have confirmed that the only change was the name of the branch from MCM to fisheries. Mismanagement, allegations of corruption and gross incompetence have come to define the fisheries branch. In addition, the lack of professional and knowledgeable staff at the fisheries branch has meant that it has effectively been caught sleeping on numerous occasions. Its Minister failed to play any leadership role at the Second Benguela Current Commission meeting which is all about effective regional fisheries management; instead the Minister of Environmental Affairs and her staff took the reins. Both Ang...

The Department of Fisheries has conservatively estimated that the interim relief lobster quota holders harvested 285 tons or more than 400% more than the 53 tons they were allocated in 2009/2010! To make matters even worse, instead of sanctioning or penalising the quota holders, DAFF has instead decreased the quotas to the commercial and recreational sectors (the most law abiding sectors) and rewarded the poachers with a 200 ton allocation in 2010/2011! In addition (and as is apparent from the blog article below), the interim relief quota process has been substantially corrupted and manipulated with many the recipients either involved in the commercial fisheries, employed full-time in other sectors of the economy or even deceased. DAFF's increase in the interim relief quotas from 53 tons to 200 tons confirms that criminal activity and poaching are rewarded.

There have long been allegations that many of the people granted an interim relief lobster quota are not fishers but have got onto the list due to the complete mismanagement of the process by the Department of Fisheries and/or because of their connections to those responsible for compiling the list. The allegations of cronyism and mismanagement received greater credence when the Department of Fisheries recently published for "comment" its draft interim relief list. The department confirmed that the names on the list have been verified and thus represent deserving recipients of the interim relief lobster quotas. A cursory glance at the names on the 84 page list reveals that a number of the intended recipients are certainly not deserving or in need of interim relief. Feike has analysed the recipients of interim relief in just one small area and found that many names on the list are of people who certainly should not qualify for "interim relief". We found names of peop...

Experts in Taiwan have suggested that Taiwan's aquatic farmers stop raising a popular type of marine mollusk to eliminate a virus that has nearly wiped out the entire industry. According to FocusTaiwan , almost all of Taiwan's cultivated abalone ( Haliotis diversicolor ) have been infected with a virus that has decreased the total harvest by 90 per cent. Taiwan's annual production has fallen to 200 tons a year, down from 2,500 tons at its peak in 2000, he said. Many young abalone in cultivation began dying for unknown reasons nine years ago, and it was only after six years of study, that researchers found the abalone fry died from infection of two kinds of bacteria: vibrio parahaemolyticus and vibrio alginolyticus. Not long after identifying the cause, mature abalone raised in northeastern Taiwan began to die in large numbers during the winter.The mass deaths were largely caused by being in waters colder than 22-23 degrees Celsius, in which the virus spreads quickly. To dat...

The 2010/2011 total allowable catch (TAC) for the west coast rock lobster fishery indicates a 100 ton decline in the TAC from the previous season. In 2009/2010 the TAC was set at 2393 tons; in 2010/2011 the TAC has been set at 2286 tons. While the overall decline is hardly newsworthy, what is of considerable concern is the manner in which the hopelessly flawed and mismanaged interim lobster relief is being accommodated. Firstly, the interim relief quota of 200 tons (an increase of 20 tons over the previous season) is made possible by reducing the deep-water commercial lobster and recreational quotas. The recreational quota has been reduced by limiting the daily take limits and the length of the season. This curtailment is particularly problematic as the department failed to consult with the sector as is required by law. The departmental TAC document (which Feike has) records a number of concerning comments from the department's own senior managers. Some of these are as follows: ...

On Sunday 31 October Minister Buyelwa Sonjica was replaced by Ms Edna Molewa as Minister of Environmental Affairs. Ms Molewa inherits a department mired in controversy and in need of urgent and efficient leadership. For many applicants in the boat-based whale watching and white shark cage diving sectors, the hope will no doubt be that the new Minister stops the chaos and confusion that has defined the DEA's management of these two sectors to date. It will be an inevitable consequence of the Cabinet reshuffle that the appeals in these two sectors will be delayed even further. The delay may not be all negative as we would advise appellants to lobby the Minister's office directly, impressing upon her the need to urgently correct the numerous legal and factual errors that have been made in the evaluation of applicants to date. The Minister needs to also urgently get a handle on the reasons why openly illegal boat based whale watching operators such as Raggy Charters in the Port Eli...

We are all no doubt familiar with the now infamous hijacking of Kalahari Resources by Sandile Majali (previous funder of the ANC with our taxes) and two of his partners who appear to have been mental patients. It would now appear that with the help of certain leading ANC members in the Western Cape, a black owned Hout Bay fishing company has now also been hijacked. The story goes as follows. In early 2009, the directors of Greys Investments Ltd approached Feike for assistance in attending to certain regulatory and governance matters. Feike agreed to assist on a pro bono basis as Greys Investments Ltd had a 2 ton lobster quota but also had 197 shareholders (12 of whom are now deceased). Greys Investments Ltd had previously been mismanaged by a series of boards with the result that by the time the shareholders met in Hout Bay in 2008 and elected the current board of directors, Greys could not uplift its fishing permit as it owed the SA Revenue Service (SARS) more than R80 000. No fishing...

The date on which written comments on the draft small scale fisheries policy are due has been extended to 5 November 2010. The same comment procedure applies.

Small scale fishers marched to Parliament on 19 October to voice their opposition to the Department of Fisheries' proposed small scale policy. They handed over a memorandum detailing their objections (see article below) to the new the Deputy Director-General of the fisheries branch. A nother SACFC?? Women fishers oppose "community" quotas The fishers hand over their memorandum to the new DDG of Fisheries (left, black suit)

The Department of Fisheries (DAFF) has been in existence since June 2009 when the new administration recognised the critical ecological and socio-economic relevance of marine fisheries and fish farming. Fisheries was then unbundled from the department of "environmental affairs and tourism". However, between June 2008 and April 2009 fisheries was left in limbo as the departments of environment and fisheries fought a bitter turf battle to control fisheries and the marine living resources fund. In the end although the administration of fisheries was moved back to the department of fisheries, the administration and management of fisheries is - frankly and honestly - in complete chaos and free-fall. DAFF and DEA have admitted that neither one actually knows who is in charge of what? Is DAFF in charge of fisheries? Is DEA in charge of the fish in marine protected areas? Is DEA in charge of managing sharks and whales? But don't these fish and mammals subsist in a "fisheries...

More than 2000 small scale commercial and traditional line fishers represented by organisations including the South African United Fishers Front (SAUFF), traditional line fishing organisations and the South African Abalone Industry Association are now united in opposition to the draft small scale fisheries policy primarily on the basis that this policy proposes to allocate rights to "communities" instead of individual fishers and the drafting of the small scale policy has to date completely ignored the interests and investments made by the more than 2000 small scale commercial and aritisinal fishers. Feike has previously pointed out on this blog that by seeking to implement a "community" or co-operative quota system, the draft policy was doomed to fail as "community" quotas are a romantic fallacy of a bygone era and allocation of quotas to co-operatives had repeatedly proved to be a spectacular failure perhaps best highlighted by the South African Commerci...

In 2007, the Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs, Rejoice Mabhudafasi tried to sneak recreational and subsistence fishing into South Africa's oldest marine protected area, the Tsitsikamma MPA. However, once the media exposed her attempt to further threaten an important nursery for line fish stocks, the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, was forced to abandon the idea. The media expose unleashed an avalanche of adverse opinion from WWF, the department's own scientists and academia that showed how ill-advised such a decision would be - whether from a biological or socio-economic perspective. However, various sources now confirm that Mabhudafsi - still the deputy minister of environmental affairs - is attempting a second covert attempt to get "recreational" and "subsistence" fishers access to the Tsitsikamma MPA. In 2007, the nub of the argument against opening up the MPA to fishing was based on a report by WWF which was accepted b...

Mr Rainer Schimpf of Expert Tours CC, based in Port Elizabeth, has been nominated as The Herald GM Citizen of the Year. Rainer Schimpf wants to make people realise the beauty and vulnerability, as well as the potential, of the diverse marine life the Port Elizabeth region has to offer. Schimpf, an avid diver, offers diving tours in the Algoa Bay area through his company Expert Tours. In his spare time, he tries to raise awareness for the marine environment through his work for Ocean Messengers, a non-governmental organisation (NGO). The enormous potential of starting up a diving tourism business in Port Elizabeth was the reason for Schimpf and his family to make the move from Germany to South Africa in 1999. For the full story, see http://www.theherald.co.za/article.aspx?id=608545. This story was originally published by the Eastern Cape Herald newspaper on 22 September 2010.

The Department of Fisheries held an important consultative meeting with abalone right holders to discuss a range of administrative, management and compliance issues. During the meeting the Department confirmed that 96% of the 150 ton quota had already been fished. The meeting which was very well attended raised a number of important discussion issues including the following: The conditions issued by Cabinet for the opening of the fishery . It is unclear why these conditions were presented to the right holders at the end of the season as opposed to in June (before the fishery opened); Administration of the fishery . The Department sought to encourage right holders to work with the Department by providing the correct information required to process applications and clarified time frames; An integrated security strategy and MCS. The Department reconfirmed its intention to partner with the National Intelligence Agency to root out poaching by investigating organised criminal syndicates. Ho...

The pocket guide SASSI list has been a remarkable success since its launch a few years ago. It successfully got a generally apathetic seafood consuming public to actually start making responsible choices about seafood which in turn forced retailers - restaurateurs and supermarkets - to procure sustainably managed fish. Its most recent re-incarnation has however raised a growing chorus of questions about its reliability and the methodology underpinning its categorisation of fish. An immediate concern raised by, inter alia , Prof John Bolton of UCT is the inclusion of farmed fish on the SASSI-list. Farmed fish of course is not wild and therefore not harvested and therefore should have no place on the SASSI (which is a sustainable seafoods list) guide. However, as Prof Bolton correctly points out, the SASSI list for example lists the non-native Pacific Oyster (wild and farmed) as a green species. In other words, WWF-SASSI is telling SA seafood consumers that consuming the non-native Pacif...

Earlier in September, the WWF-SA supported the launch of the film "End of the Line" which premises its forecast that most commercial fishing stocks will be fished to extinction by 2048, which is itself based on a 2006 paper in Nature by authors Worm et al . The Worm et al paper's major scientific claims have since been heavily rebutted globally and even the authors themselves have accepted that their paper's claim about 2048 is flawed. But WWF (and incidentally Investec) continued to support a film whose message is a lie and a fraud committed against seafood consumers. As an aside, one must question whether Investec would proffer advice to their clients knowing the advice to be false or widely contradicted and therefore unreliable? In response to a Cape Times article titled "SA Scientists slam no-fish-by-2048 claim made in film" (reference to the "End of the Line" film), the WWF's Samantha Petersen continued to assert the myth that "80% ...

The publication of the draft small-scale fisheries policy recently for comment confirms what this blog and other commentators have been warning against. The lack of professional fisheries managers and institutional knowledge at the department of fisheries has resulted in the publication of a dangerously flawed draft small scale fisheries policy. There are two fundamental and overarching flaws with the draft policy in our opinion. The first flaw is that the draft policy pretends that the more than 2000 current small scale commercial (or artisinal) fishers that have a variety and - yes - basket of high value commercial fishing rights from abalone, lobsters, hake, net fish to oysters and mussels do not exist. The draft policy suffers from a misnomer that because the Marine Living Resources Act does not explicitly name "small-scale commercial" or "artisinal fishers" as recipients of fishing rights, they therefore have been completely ignored. In 2001, the South African ...

Mr Langa Zita has been appointed as the Director-General of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) according to a press statement issued by the Minister of DAFF on 6 September 2010. Mr Zita is a former chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee responsible for fisheries oversight and should therefore provide the critical stewardship that the fisheries branch requires during this difficult period. Articles on this blog have repeated the number of challenges facing the commercial (both large-scale and small-scale artisinal commercial fisheries). Mr Zita will undoubtedly be called upon to set out a suitable policy tone to support the more than 40,000 jobs supported by the fisheries sector and the more than R12 billion in investments in infrastructure. Mr Zita's role will be particularly important in the immediate future as the fisheries branch continues to limp along without any professional fisheries managers in senior management roles. As an aside, the Minister...

By letter of 9 June 2010, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) requested IUCN, in its capacity as an intergovernmental organisation, to participate in the Assembly of the International Seabed Authority and to provide a written statement to the Tribunal on Case No. 17 concerning Responsibilities and Obligations of States Sponsoring Persons and Entities with Respect to Activities in the International Seabed Area (Request for Advisory Opinion Submitted to the Seabed Disputes Chamber). This was perhaps the first request for an Advisory Opinion submitted to the Seabed Disputes Chamber of the Tribunal. As a matter of policy, the Case has raised issues that IUCN, on behalf of Nature, believes are of importance. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was adopted as a package to be accepted as a whole. In the Convention it is recognized that the problems of ocean space are closely interrelated and need to be considered as a whole. Through the Convention a ...

More than 7 months since President Zuma signed the proclamation appointing the Minister of Fisheries in charge of marine and coastal management, the branch continues to be - as one ANC member of Parliament put it - led by actors! The head of the organisation is an acting deputy-director general (the third actor since January). Neither does MCM have a chief director of the critical post of fisheries management nor a chief financial officer. Their are dozens of director posts in research and fisheries management that continue to remain vacant. The lack of professional fisheries managers, fisheries economists and fisheries researchers is having an obviously profound adverse impact on fisheries management. Firstly, we still have no idea what the Minister's intentions are with regard the management of our commercial fisheries, the restructuring of marine and coastal management and the expansion of marine and freshwater fish farming except for some very vague and ambiguous statements in...

The second Ministerial Conference of the Benguela Current Commission (BCC) is scheduled to take place in Cape Town on 2 September 2010. While the Minister's of Fisheries from Namibia and Angola will attend as representatives of their respective countries, it is unclear who will represent South Africa. It could either be the Minister of Fisheries or the Minister of Environmental Affairs. The first Ministerial Conference took place two years ago and addressed a number of critical institutional arrangements affecting the management and administration of the BCC. The second Ministerial Conference will no doubt have to address the fundamental issue of adopting a final agreement establishing the BCC as the current BCC was established in terms of an interim agreement. A final agreement is required in order to secure long term and sustainable funding for the various regional marine ecosystem projects and for administration and operational costs. The second Ministerial Conference will also...

On 18 August 2010, the Department of Environmental Affairs issued a letter to appellants and stakeholders in the boat-based whale watching (BBWW) and white shark cage diving (WSCD) sectors confirming that a "large number of appeals" have been received and the department is unable to provide any indication as to how long the appeals process will take. This is hardly surprising. Firstly, in terms of an appeals process the Minister and her department do not have any legal framework in which to consider, evaluate and decide the appeals. If we recall, the Minister of Environmental Affairs and her department do not have the legal authority in the first place to actually evaluate applications in these sectors (but they insisted on doing so). In defending their perceived authority, the DEA conceded that it does not have any authority to act under GN Regulation 1111 of September 1998 (the fisheries regulations). Regulation 5 of the fisheries regulations stipulates the procedures to b...

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) reported that it had successfully issued detention orders on two cargo ships that were headed to Hong Kong. One of the ships was found with cargo of 1.6 tons of abalone on board which is assumed to have been harvested illegally. The second ship's arrival in Cape Town is expected in the next week. The action by SARS is to be highly commended as it indicates the use of intelligence and information networks which are essential to reducing the scourge of poaching. The costs that will be incurred by the poaching syndicate will be substantial if one considers the lost costs of freighting, processing and up-front payments to runners and poachers. However, the individual or entity that exported the product must be publicly named and prosecuted. Further, the damages suffered by the shipping companies concerned and its clients who would also have been shipping products to Hong Kong should also be claimed from the exporter of the illegal abalone. Of s...

The Marine Ecosystems and Management newsletter (Aug 2010) reported that in July, US President Obama, signed an executive order establishing a national ocean policy for the US which is the country’s first comprehensive, integrated policy for stewardship of its oceans and coasts. The policy launches a process of coastal and marine spatial planning for the nation, and coordinates the various ocean-related activities of more than 20 federal agencies under a new and centralized National Ocean Council. The President’s action reflects the recommendations of a federal task force that explored ways to promote long-term conservation and use of ocean resources. It is therefore noteworthy that in South Africa we have been doing the very opposite and will be (mis) managing our marine and coastal resources in a disintegrated and ad hoc fashion and contrary to all professional and scientific advice provided to government! South Africa's ill-advised mismanagement strategy of our oceans and coast...

Many abalone quota holders east of Cape Hangklip have caught their entire annual quota in a single morning usually between about 8am and 11am. One processor in the area confirmed that of the quotas it has arrangements with for processing about 50% or 20 tons have been harvested over a period of about 9 fishing days. Although clearly happy with their legal quotas, many quota holders have expressed concerns that the department of fisheries has yet to develop a compliance and management strategy for the fishery more than 30 days into the harvesting season. For example, fishery compliance officers are still unsure how to deal with quota holders that land slightly more than their allocated quotas as quota holders cannot carry a scale on their vessels. Quota holders have prudently suggested that the normal tolerances should be allowed for (about 10% of the legal catch limit), alternatively, that over-catches be allocated to fellow quota holders and deducted from their permits. Further, catch...

A South African processor is seeking to purchase approximately 500 tons of pilchards on an urgent basis. If you have 500 tons of quota available please contact Feike.

Former environmental portfolio committee chair Langa Zita is set to become the next director general of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. According to well-placed sources in the department, Zita's name has been forwarded as first choice to Public Services Minister Richard Baloyi and Cabinet for approval. Zita has a strong background in the South African Communist Party, is said to be a close ally of Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi and has been one of Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson's closest advisers in the past few months. Zita was not initially in the running for the position, after Njabulo Nduli left the department last year. But by the time a second round of interviews took place, he was closely involved in departmental decision-making and had emerged as favourite. Not everyone is happy with Zita's looming appointment. Factions in the department who oppose him are worried about his management skills. Other department officials s...