Interim Relief Lobster Poaching Crisis

Feike has learnt that the interim relief (IR) lobster poaching has increased so dramatically that the IR poachers have harvested more than 500 tons in the Elandsbaai area alone. The entire TAC for the IR fishery was controversially set by the Minister at 200 tons.

And in Paternoster, IR poachers are removing 30,000 lobster tails a day and selling them for R5 each which is harming the commercial market. IR poachers are also harvesting more than 2 tons of live lobsters daily. Operators in the area complain that there has not been any fishery control officers or monitors to record IR catches or activity for "weeks".

And this same department wants to allocate "community quotas" to 5000 people! If that happens we might as well place our inshore resources on the IUCN Red List.