Will South Africa's Department of Forestry, Fisheries & Environment get a minister from the official opposition, Democratic Alliance, party?
South African fisheries management is in a depressed state and requires serious and substantial re-invigoration.
What governance aspects and fisheries management areas should a new minister focus on in the first 100 days of office?
These are my suggestions:
1. New fisheries development and innovation: Lift the ill-advised moratorium on new fisheries development and urgently address the bureaucratic and unnecessarily complicated application to develop and innovate our fisheries. In short, the objective must be to ENCOURAGE expansion of our commercial fisheries and the size of the commercial TAC. And where existing right holders seek to invest in fisheries growth and innovation, make provision for levy rebates.
2. FRAP Litigation: There are numerous cases still outstanding from FRAP 2016. These need to be resolved with great urgency. Of particular concern is Minister Creecy's unnecessary "self-review" of her decisions in the hake inshore trawl fishing sector. In addition, there are more than 30 review applications pending in just the hake long and small pelagic fishing sectors. Many of these ought to be settled and rights allocated because of the patently obvious scoring and decision-making errors.
3. Re-starting sector-wide consultations and meetings: The new fisheries minister needs to re-commit to consulting with industry on a sector-specific basis as opposed to Creecy's ill-advised "I will only consult with FISH SA". And senior managers need to be talking to industry and fishers more directly and frequently. Fisheries will be better managed when policy-makers spend more time on harbour walls and on the decks of fishing vessels as opposed to on the 7th floor of the Foretrust office building.
4. Fisheries crime: Special focus needs to be placed on curtailing lobster and abalone poaching and the massive surge of illegal recreational line fishing in KZN and the sale of recreational caught line fish and tunas. The dedicated anti-poaching green courts with properly trained and staffed personnel need to be re-visited. Abalone fishing rights need to be urgently allocated and a new thinking about the TAC and displacing illegal fishing needs to be adopted.
5. Fishing harbours: The management of fisheries harbours such as Hout Bay, which are known conduits of fisheries and other crimes should be devolved to capable local governments and these harbours require rehabilitation and investment by the private sector.
6. High Seas Treaty: South Africa needs to urgently sign the High Seas Treaty and then to ratify it.
7. Review fisheries administration: We need to simplify fisheries administration and management. For one, an urgent review of the multiplicity of permits needed to land and transport fish from one place to another requires re-thinking. Two, the permitting process has to be migrated away from the current ancient hard copy paper process to a simple on-line system capable of being accessed from any computer or smart phone.
Over the longer term (6 to 18 months) we need to review the MLRA, the 1999 fisheries regulations and current fisheries policy framework, including the embarrassingly cumbersome "transfer of fishing rights" policy.
