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The Western Cape High Court granted an order on 24 April 2014 allowing South Africa's traditional line fishermen to fish until such time as the court finally decides the review application which was brought by the SA Commercial Line Fishers Association on behalf of its members who were summarily dispossessed of their fishing rights on 30 December 2013.  The review application will in all probability be heard by the High Court in July or August. A timetable needs to be agreed between the legal teams representing the line fishers and the Minister. However, the Minister and Mr Desmond Stevens (who was the acting DDG responsible for the decision to exclude  335 of the 450 traditional line fishers) continues to refuse to make available the full record that underpins the FRAP 2013 decision-making process.   The court order granted on 24 April 2014 was effectively taken by agreement between the parties as the Minister and Stevens had failed to file any answering papers ...

The Democratic Alliance today announced that it considers the current state of mismanagement that continues to afflict South Africa's small fishing harbours to be a stranglehold on local development and job creation, particularly affecting the Western Cape. Of South Africa's 12 fishing harbours, 11 are located in the Western Cape. A 2011 SA Institute of Engineers Report stated the following about our fishing harbours: "The 2001-2007 repair and maintenance programme, to the value of R440 million, restored all 12 harbours to an excellent condition. A regular, planned maintenance programme implemented immediately would have consolidated this upgrade of harbour infrastructure." Between 2007 and the present, very little harbour management and maintenance have been carried out. Some harbours such as Kalk Bay and St Helena Bay are in much better state than others but remain poorly managed and under-utilised with very little effective utilisation of sea space for sma...

Greenpeace Africa has advised Feike that the MV Alma has now abandoned its plans to berth at a South African port and may instead be seeking permission to enter Port Louis, Mauritius. It was supposed to have come into Durban Harbour this morning at approximately 11am, according to Greenpeace. Clarification : A number of persons have commented that whale (and therefore whale meat) is not "fish" but a marine mammal and, therefore does it not stand to reason that the Marine Living Resources Act does not apply and that DAFF is therefore correct that it does not have authority over the "whale meat" and the ALMA? This is not correct because the MLRA defines "fish" extremely broadly as follows: ‘‘fish’’ means the marine living resources of the sea and the seashore, including any aquatic plant or animal whether piscine or not, and any mollusc, crustacean, coral, sponge, holothurian or other echinoderm, reptile and marine mammal , and includes their eggs, l...

The South African government's Fisheries Department appears to be actively aiding and abetting an Icelandic vessel carrying 2000 tons of whale meat that is currently seeking entry to either the Ports of East London, Durban or Richards Bay. The initial information provided to Feike on 12 April was that the vessel was seeking entry to PE harbour.  When Feike began seeking the intervention of DAFF during the course of 12 April 2014, DAFF's bewildering response was that it would do nothing because the vessel - The Alma - IS NOT A FISHING VESSEL!  See DAFF's two most recent tweets on the subject below:  Followed by  Serge Raemaekers  and 33 others Fisheries Management  ‏ @ DAFFisheries     11m # DAFFisheries will no longer entertain # Alma on Twitter and refers all media queries to its spokesperson. Expand   Reply     Retweet     Favorite     More Fisheries Man...

The Democratic Alliance wants to know where the Fisheries Minister, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, is. We do know that she popped up to attend the recent news conference held by Oceana when South Africa's largest fishing company announced a massive dividend pay-out to its employee trust. But, the Minister told us back in February when she desperately tried to head off the urgent court application by the traditional line fishers that she would be starting a series of "listening sessions" with fishing communities. As with all prior undertakings by Joemat-Pettersson, even these have failed to materialise. Now, she has seriously angered fishing communities by issuing dates and times for these meetings ... and then failing to pitch up! And what is worse, the scheduled "listening sessions" sees the Minister attending two meetings a day at different venues at the same time! Talk about putting pressure on the infamous Ministerial Blue Light conveys (or mind-numbingly expen...

Members of the South African Abalone Industry Association - a deeply divided and moribund association - have confirmed to Feike that with less than 4 months to go before 303 abalone fishing rights terminate, the department of fisheries continues to operate with its head firmly in the sand. DAFF has not even begun preparing for what will be a hugely contested and controversial rights allocation process. DAFF had refused to even place the subject of a rights allocation process on any of its 2013 management working group meeting agendas. If the 2013 FRAP has imploded into a cesspool of corruption, failure and maladministration, it is hard to comprehend the degree of disaster awaiting any abalone rights allocation. What will happen come 30 July 2014 when 303 abalone rights terminate? More joblessness? Uncertainty, pandemonium, corruption? Rights being haphazardly allocated to party cronies and leaders of organised criminal gangs; rampant poaching that may finally be the death knell for...

It appears that the Department of Fisheries has forgotten that its mandate is determined by Section 2 of the Marine Living Resources Act. It is supposed to be committed to the sustainable management of our marine resources, having due and proper regard to internationally recognised management principles such as precaution and decisions based on the best available scientific evidence.  We understand that the Department is now proposing to allocate interim relief line fish quotas to squid fishing crew because of a closed season that has been urgently agreed to for the months of April, May and June as a result of the precarious state in which the squid resource finds itself.  The Department of Fisheries is not a social welfare agency  and by allocating "interim relief" line fish quotas to squid fishing crew it is acting unlawfully and beyond its mandate. The line fishery is already a fishery managed in terms of section 16 of the MLRA (it is the only fishery recognis...

Goldfields, a South African bullion company, decided back in 2009 to invest in trout farming in Lesotho under the name, Highlands Trout. The company had identified the pristine cold waters of Katse Dam to farm trout. Highlands Trout is now producing 2000 tons a year of trout for the Japanese market. By way of comparison, South Africa produces about half of that in trout and a total of just over 4000 tons of farmed fresh water and marine fish despite the fact that we have a 3000 km coastline and multiple fresh water dams and water bodies.  When Goldfields decided to invest an estimated R100 million in the project back in 2009, Lesotho did not feature as a trout farming country, let alone an exporter of prime quality fish capable of sale on the lucrative Japanese market. More importantly, Lesotho lacked a basic regulatory framework to sustainably manage fish farming in fresh water bodies such as Katse. And of course Katse Dam was built principally to provide drinking water to So...

The International Seabed Authority is starting a process of stakeholder consultation in advance of developing draft regulations for the exploitation of polymetallic nodules. The consultation includes issues relating to the environmental management of deep-sea mining. Here is a link to the document inviting you to respond to the ISA:  http://www.indeep-project.org/sites/indeep-project.org/f/document/ISA-SSurvey.pdf