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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South Africa to bring the unsustainable and illicit trade in abalone were never given adequate support before they were withdrawn, finds a new study launched on 16 December 2010 in the TRAFFIC Bulletin.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