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The pocket guide SASSI list has been a remarkable success since its launch a few years ago. It successfully got a generally apathetic seafood consuming public to actually start making responsible choices about seafood which in turn forced retailers - restaurateurs and supermarkets - to procure sustainably managed fish. Its most recent re-incarnation has however raised a growing chorus of questions about its reliability and the methodology underpinning its categorisation of fish. An immediate concern raised by, inter alia , Prof John Bolton of UCT is the inclusion of farmed fish on the SASSI-list. Farmed fish of course is not wild and therefore not harvested and therefore should have no place on the SASSI (which is a sustainable seafoods list) guide. However, as Prof Bolton correctly points out, the SASSI list for example lists the non-native Pacific Oyster (wild and farmed) as a green species. In other words, WWF-SASSI is telling SA seafood consumers that consuming the non-native Pacif...

Earlier in September, the WWF-SA supported the launch of the film "End of the Line" which premises its forecast that most commercial fishing stocks will be fished to extinction by 2048, which is itself based on a 2006 paper in Nature by authors Worm et al . The Worm et al paper's major scientific claims have since been heavily rebutted globally and even the authors themselves have accepted that their paper's claim about 2048 is flawed. But WWF (and incidentally Investec) continued to support a film whose message is a lie and a fraud committed against seafood consumers. As an aside, one must question whether Investec would proffer advice to their clients knowing the advice to be false or widely contradicted and therefore unreliable? In response to a Cape Times article titled "SA Scientists slam no-fish-by-2048 claim made in film" (reference to the "End of the Line" film), the WWF's Samantha Petersen continued to assert the myth that "80% ...

The publication of the draft small-scale fisheries policy recently for comment confirms what this blog and other commentators have been warning against. The lack of professional fisheries managers and institutional knowledge at the department of fisheries has resulted in the publication of a dangerously flawed draft small scale fisheries policy. There are two fundamental and overarching flaws with the draft policy in our opinion. The first flaw is that the draft policy pretends that the more than 2000 current small scale commercial (or artisinal) fishers that have a variety and - yes - basket of high value commercial fishing rights from abalone, lobsters, hake, net fish to oysters and mussels do not exist. The draft policy suffers from a misnomer that because the Marine Living Resources Act does not explicitly name "small-scale commercial" or "artisinal fishers" as recipients of fishing rights, they therefore have been completely ignored. In 2001, the South African ...

Mr Langa Zita has been appointed as the Director-General of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) according to a press statement issued by the Minister of DAFF on 6 September 2010. Mr Zita is a former chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee responsible for fisheries oversight and should therefore provide the critical stewardship that the fisheries branch requires during this difficult period. Articles on this blog have repeated the number of challenges facing the commercial (both large-scale and small-scale artisinal commercial fisheries). Mr Zita will undoubtedly be called upon to set out a suitable policy tone to support the more than 40,000 jobs supported by the fisheries sector and the more than R12 billion in investments in infrastructure. Mr Zita's role will be particularly important in the immediate future as the fisheries branch continues to limp along without any professional fisheries managers in senior management roles. As an aside, the Minister...

By letter of 9 June 2010, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) requested IUCN, in its capacity as an intergovernmental organisation, to participate in the Assembly of the International Seabed Authority and to provide a written statement to the Tribunal on Case No. 17 concerning Responsibilities and Obligations of States Sponsoring Persons and Entities with Respect to Activities in the International Seabed Area (Request for Advisory Opinion Submitted to the Seabed Disputes Chamber). This was perhaps the first request for an Advisory Opinion submitted to the Seabed Disputes Chamber of the Tribunal. As a matter of policy, the Case has raised issues that IUCN, on behalf of Nature, believes are of importance. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was adopted as a package to be accepted as a whole. In the Convention it is recognized that the problems of ocean space are closely interrelated and need to be considered as a whole. Through the Convention a ...

More than 7 months since President Zuma signed the proclamation appointing the Minister of Fisheries in charge of marine and coastal management, the branch continues to be - as one ANC member of Parliament put it - led by actors! The head of the organisation is an acting deputy-director general (the third actor since January). Neither does MCM have a chief director of the critical post of fisheries management nor a chief financial officer. Their are dozens of director posts in research and fisheries management that continue to remain vacant. The lack of professional fisheries managers, fisheries economists and fisheries researchers is having an obviously profound adverse impact on fisheries management. Firstly, we still have no idea what the Minister's intentions are with regard the management of our commercial fisheries, the restructuring of marine and coastal management and the expansion of marine and freshwater fish farming except for some very vague and ambiguous statements in...

The second Ministerial Conference of the Benguela Current Commission (BCC) is scheduled to take place in Cape Town on 2 September 2010. While the Minister's of Fisheries from Namibia and Angola will attend as representatives of their respective countries, it is unclear who will represent South Africa. It could either be the Minister of Fisheries or the Minister of Environmental Affairs. The first Ministerial Conference took place two years ago and addressed a number of critical institutional arrangements affecting the management and administration of the BCC. The second Ministerial Conference will no doubt have to address the fundamental issue of adopting a final agreement establishing the BCC as the current BCC was established in terms of an interim agreement. A final agreement is required in order to secure long term and sustainable funding for the various regional marine ecosystem projects and for administration and operational costs. The second Ministerial Conference will also...