South African marine conservation is to get a Christmas present — the first cheque from the sale of confiscated perlemoen (abalone) on the international market.
The money will be welcome — as the funds are paid into the Marine Living Resources Fund in December, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism’s Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) arm’s war on poaching will reach another level.
”The first monies are expected to roll in this week for the sold abalone which, because it was dollar-base priced, is affected by the value of the rand. At the moment frozen abalone goes for $65 – $85 per kilo, with the dried variety selling for $20 per kilogram,” said Nasir Daniels, finance and procurement director at
MCM.
”We’ve finalised a tender in November this year, with two service providers appointed to administer the entire plan of processing, marketing and selling on behalf of the state,” Daniels said before February 2001, the state was selling
confiscated perlemoen via closed tenders. This spawned a vast net of corruption and fraud.
”We found out that, for example, people were colour-copying tender documents to export endless amounts of abalone. Today we don’t even know the value of these false exports. People also bought poor quality abalone on tender and then replaced them with fresh, poached abalone. The situation was uncontrollable,” he said. And so it was decided that the closed tender programme would end, and the department would stockpile all confiscated perlemoen.
Daniels said more than 200 tonnes of stockpiled perlemoen were now kept in a commercial storage facility.
A final tender was put in place after two previous attempts failed.
The first evoked a storm of protest from existing perlemoen processors and was withdrawn, while the second was stopped when the South African Bureau of Standards scuppered a proposal for MCM to sell the entire consignment to the Far East.
”Two companies were awarded the tender, but we don’t want to disclose too much of the where and how because of security risks,” said Daniels.
However, Daniels said all produce was insured, were escorted by armed guards when transported, and were subjected to a compliance audit by Deloitte and Touche as per tender requirement.
Other security features included a verification unit, extra security at processing plants together with closed-circuit television, as well as armed guards on patrol and armed response.
Daniels said as part of an ongoing cost recovery programme, MCM also awarded a two-year tender for selling confiscated Patagonian toothfish, with discussions around the first transfer presently underway.
A tender for the sale of confiscated West Coast rock lobster has already been awarded, with R4,5-million realised from the sale of the 20 tonnes of lobster seized from the now defunct Hout Bay fishing company, implicated in massive poaching.
”We also intend advertising a two-year tender for the tonnes of crayfish that walk out onto the beaches with the onset of red-tide (a marine phenomenon which causes a lack of oxygen in the water),” said Daniels.
The Marine Living Resources Fund makes provision for, among others, marine and coastal research, compliance and sustainable management.
According to the department’s deputy director-general, they did not know exactly how much perlemoen would be put onto the market initially.
”As funds come in, we would have to do proper budgeting for approval of where funds would go to; to improve compliance or to increase research capacity in particular fields,” said Horst Kleinschmidt.
He said the department was ”very keen” to curtail poaching, in particular perlemoen poaching, and ”significant” amounts could be allocated to current compliance initiatives such as Operation Neptune. — Sapa