Abalone trafficking fuels crime and coastal poverty in South Africa

South Africa’s iconic abalone, long a cornerstone of coastal ecosystems and livelihoods, is under severe threat. 

Decades of poaching and trafficking have pushed wild populations of the endemic marine mollusc, Haliotis midae, toward collapse, while fuelling organised crime and deepening poverty in coastal communities, a recent Traffic report, ShellShock: The State of South African Abalone Poaching and Trafficking in 2025, found.

Since 2000, about 67% of abalone exports from South Africa are estimated to have originated from illegal harvests. In 2024 alone, an estimated 4 000 tonnes were poached from South African waters, much of the value diverted from marginalised coastal communities to criminal syndicates. Legal fisheries have seen quotas shrink to historic lows. 

“With hundreds of kilometers of coastline to police and well-resourced and organised poaching gangs to contend with, South African law enforcement has had limited success in preventing poaching,” the report noted. Despite regular operations and confiscations, most poached abalone leaves the country undetected.

Ecologically, socio-economically important

H. midae is ecologically and socio-economically important in South Africa. Its high value in east Asian markets drives illegal exploitation, pushing wild populations towards potential extinction.

The species plays a key ecological role, both as a source of food for predators and through its role in supporting productive marine ecosystems by processing macroalgae and cycling nutrients.  

The illicit trade chain is long and complex, spanning poachers, middlemen, exporters, wholesalers and retailers. It has fostered sophisticated criminal networks across sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, causing widespread socio-economic harm, particularly to vulnerable and impoverished coastal communities. Weak governance, corruption and inequality have further undermined counter-poaching efforts, the report said.

Traffic’s analysis highlights large discrepancies between South Africa’s legal abalone production and reported imports into Hong Kong’s Special Administrative Region (SAR) and other consumer states, demonstrating the scale of the illegal trade. 

Countries such as Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique accounted for 93% of dried abalone exports from non-producing African states between 2017 and 2024, suggesting these nations are used to launder and re-export poached South African abalone.

SA withdraws Cites proposal 

At last month’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) CoP20 meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, South Africa withdrew its proposal to list only dried abalone under Cites Appendix II, which covers species that may become threatened unless trade is closely controlled. 

South Africa argued that farmed and ranch-raised abalone – produced in large quantities for export in fresh, frozen or canned form – does not significantly affect wild populations. Regulating farmed exports under Cites would impose heavy administrative burdens and affect livelihoods, while dried abalone is easily distinguishable from other forms.

Wild H. midae populations have been severely depleted by illegal fishing, driven by organised crime, with an estimated 96 million animals poached over 10 years. In contrast, commercial farms produce about 3 000 tonnes annually, with ranches adding another 200 tonnes, mostly exported to Hong Kong. Populations inside marine protected areas have plummeted, with some now holding only 1% of their former numbers.

By listing dried abalone, the aim would have been to protect wild populations and support recovery over the long-term while allowing farmed exports to continue. Traffic said that it supports stronger international trade controls under Cites but not in the form South Africa proposed. It noted that South Africa’s Appendix II proposal was technically inconsistent with convention rules and risked harming the legal industry.

The department of forestry, fisheries and the environment did not respond to the Mail & Guardian’s enquiry on why South Africa withdrew its proposal, but a departmental spokesperson told Mongabay that that reasons for the withdrawal would be given once there’s “more clarity on certain issues.”

Markus Bergener, of Traffic, and an author of the ShellShock report, told the M&G: “Traffic is strongly supportive of the use of Cites as a tool for combating abalone trafficking but did not support the Appendix II listing with the ‘dried form’ annotation, as it was technically not fully consistent with Appendix-II listings of animal species.”

South Africa could instead list the species in Appendix III, annotated to only include dried meat, Bergener said.

The report highlights the scale and complexity of illegal trade in this species, he said. “While a Cites listing could help conserve wild populations, more time is needed to engage stakeholders, assess feasibility and mitigate potential unintended consequences, ensuring measures support conservation without compromising the legal abalone industry and local livelihoods.”

Law enforcement, policy interventions failure

Traffic concluded that decades of law enforcement and policy interventions have failed, with South Africa’s abalone fishery “seemingly locked in a cycle of unsustainable harvest and criminality”. 

This is likely to cause further socioeconomic harm before inevitably ending in complete collapse of an ecologically and economically valuable marine resource. 

It welcomed South Africa’s recent compulsory specification for exports of dried abalone as a positive step towards empowering local law enforcement to combat illegal exports of poached abalone. 

“By cutting out exports of confiscated poached abalone, the compulsory specification may also have a positive impact in consumer markets on the perceptions of quality and consistency of South African abalone, and accordingly price, by providing consumers with confidence that illegally sourced (and lower quality) abalone is not finding its way into legal markets.” 

Traffic recommended that South African law enforcement needs to be supported by strong judicial structures to ensure effective prosecution of abalone poachers and traffickers. 

“The now defunct ‘abalone court’ significantly increased rates of prosecution and numbers of convictions when it was operational.” 

Re-establishing this court could promote more effective law enforcement, it said, adding that  other policy options to empower the judiciary could be the training of specialised prosecutors with expert knowledge on abalone-related crimes. 

“Abalone in destination markets should ideally be traceable to a legal and sustainable source. Implementing strong supply chainwide traceability systems will make it challenging for traffickers to introduce poached abalone into legal supply chains.”