All wild abalone (perlemoen) fishing will be suspended from November 1 to ensure the survival of the species, the government announced on Thursday.
A social plan to address the job losses resulting from the decision has been approved, government communications head Themba Maseko told a media briefing after Cabinet’s Wednesday fortnightly meeting. ”This suspension was based on the fact that the abalone stock is in a crisis and is threatened with commercial extinction.”
The main causes of the decline in abalone stocks are poaching and the migration of West Coast rock lobster into the abalone areas, which eat the sea urchins providing shelter to juvenile abalone.
Policing to enforce the suspension and prevent poaching will be increased, Maseko said.
In a statement later on Thursday, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said there are currently 302 rights holders (262 individual divers and 40 legal entities in the form of close corporations) operating in the sector with about 800 jobs, including the individual divers.
”These are the people and families this decision will impact on the most. We have therefore consulted with the Department of Labour and jointly developed a social plan to mitigate the impacts of suspending wild-abalone commercial fishing,” he said.
This plan includes the department’s developing a sustainable aqua-culture industry and issuing additional permits for whale watching and shark cage diving.
To ensure that the suspension of harvesting is observed, monitoring and control on the part of the department will be increased.
Abalone population dynamics will also be monitored through regular research surveys, Van Schalkwyk said.
The suspension will ensure the survival of the species and that generations to follow ”will know what perlemoen is”.
”To suspend fishing in any fishery is a very difficult decision to take as we are aware that such a decision will have an impact on the livelihoods of many people and families in the industry.
”We are unfortunately at a point where the commercial harvesting of wild abalone can no longer be justified because the stock has declined to such an extent that the resource is threatened with commercial extinction,” he said.
Studies had shown that unless decisive and immediate action was taken, the resource would collapse completely with little prospect of recovery. For the past few years the recommendation from the department’s managers and researchers had been that the fishery was in crisis and closure could not be avoided.
”We are now at the point where the total allowable catch [TAC] reached a record low of 125 tonnes for the 2006/7 season.”
The only responsible option left was to take the unfortunate decision to suspend fishing in the abalone fishery in terms of section 16 of the Marine Living Resources Act.
In the early years, catches of abalone were unregulated and landings escalated to a high of nearly 3 000 tonnes in 1965, before declining rapidly to a point in 1970 when the first commercial quotas within a TAC were introduced.
The stabilising effect of a TAC-managed fishery was apparent, with catches remaining relatively constant at between 600 and 700 tonnes a year between 1970 and 1995.
Over the past 10 years, due to declining resources, the TAC had to be reduced annually from 615 tonnes in 1995 to a record low of 125 tonnes for the 2006/07 season.
Worldwide, abalone fisheries have either closed or are threatened by commercial extinction, for example in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
The North American fisheries have now been closed for more than 10 years, and it has been suggested that such fisheries are slow to recover because closure was delayed, Van Schalkwyk said. — Sapa