The Department of Fisheries recently confirmed that despite its various promises over the past 2 years, the large pelagic fishery and particularly our Southern Bluefin tuna (SBT) catches, has confirmed how poor our fisheries management policies are and how they continue to deterring foreign and domestic investment in our fisheries economy.
The Department has confirmed that 75% of the 2018 SBT has not been caught. A mere 15 of the more than 50 right holders are fishing. What happened to the thousands of jobs we were promised when the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tunas (CCSBT) announced South Africa's additional SBT quota?
Our ongoing failure to attract the vessels and professional experts to harvest our large pelagic quotas is directly rooted in the fact that foreign vessel owners and investors have identified South Africa as being entirely unattractive and in fact a significant risk to investment.
We need to urgently review how we manage this fishery; what measures are considered completely untenable to investors and South African right holders; we need to urgently halt the aggressive and confrontational fisheries compliance approach that has come to define the relationship between fishery control officers and vessel officers and crew.
We need to realise that we need investors in this and other fisheries more than they need us.
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