South Africa divers risk all to poach marine delicacies for China diners
ONE Sat u rday n ig ht i n August, Deurick van Blerk, 26, climbed into his small boat off the coast of Cape Town on another of his illegal fishing expeditions. He never returned.
Investigators are looking into allegations by fellow divers and his family that he was murdered, shot by a special task force during an antipoaching operation in an increasingly violent battle between South African authorities and illegal hunters of abalone shellfish and rock lobster.
Abalone is a delicac y pri zed i n Hong Kong, mainland China and elsewhere in east Asia, where dishes featuring the marine molluscs are coveted at wedding banquets and can cost thousands of dollars.
Illegal divers also search for rock lobster which is sold on the local market.
“Deurick and I started poaching when we were 15 years old,” his cousin Bruce van Reenen, 23, told AFP, struggling to control his emotions.
“Often we were fishing together, but that night we weren’t. We went on separate boats, I went diving around the corner in Camps Bay and Deurick went to Cape Point for lobster that night.”
Divers l i ke Va n Blerk a nd Va n Reenen can earn hundreds of dollars for a successful night’s fishing.
But it is a fraction of what the dried abalone is worth on the markets of Hong Kong, wit h prices reaching t housa nds of dol la r s per k i logramme.
Overfishing started affecting abalone stocks as early as the 1950s, but it was not until the mid-1990s that rampant poaching began to take a grave toll.
Stocks decimated
George Branch, a marine biologist at the University of Cape Town, told AFP that since commercial harvesting began, abalone stocks have been reduced to a quarter of what they once were.
And West Coast rock lobster has dwindled dramatically to just 2.5 percent of its original population.
“Abalone is going almost entirely to East Asia, predom i na nt ly Hong Kong,” said Markus Burgener of Traffic, an NGO that monitors wildlife trade.
Retail prices in Hong Kong for dried Sout h Africa n aba lone var y from $300 per kg to over $10,000, he said.
“It is ultimately being consumed in China because t hat is where t he greatest demand lies,” he explained, saying there were huge numbers of people involved in the commodity chain.
“The rea l issue is t hat t here are thousands of people involved. It just can’t be sustainable.”
Rare source of work
Van Blerk’s family live in Hangberg, a poor coastal community on the edge of Hout Bay some 20 km from Cape Town, where abalone and lobster poaching is a ra re source of work.
“It’s a threat for me also because t hey are shooting at us now,” his cousin said. “But what can I do? I must go on, it’s my life.
“I lost a cousin, unfortunately, but my life must go on because otherwise, my child will go hungry.”
Van Blerk’s girlfriend was pregnant when he disappeared, and she has since given birth to a baby girl.
She had waited for him to return at dawn, ready with his regular morning coffee.
But she has heard nothing, and t here has been no sign of a body found.
Van Blerk’s two fellow crew members who went out with him that night say he was shot during an antipoaching enforcement operat ion which left bullet holes in the boat.
They have since filed a criminal ca se aga i nst t he aut hor it ies for attempted murder.
Khaye Nkwanyana, spokesman for the fisheries department, told AFP investigations were ongoing. He said the task force “should only fire in selfdefence”.
Community activist Roscoe Jacobs, 32, said local people see poaching as one of the few ways out of poverty.
“It’s not something t hat people want to do, but because of our socioeconomic conditions, it’s something that we are forced into,” he said.
“You really do it because it’s either that, or do I go and rob somebody? It’s something that you do at your own risk.”
Jacobs defended poaching, saying that “conservation needs to be considerate of people”.
“We’ve been l i v i ng of f t hese resources for more than 300 years and we will live off these resources for 300 years to come.”
The illicit quarry draws divers into a deadly world of gangland violence and international crime syndicates.
I n S ept ember, S out h A f r ic a n police seized a truck heading to Botswana ca r r y i ng 10 kg of aba lone wit h a n est i mated st reet va lue of $400,000.
And last year, Chinese authorities broke up a smuggling ring in t he southern city of Guangzhou, which was attempting to shift $115 million in seafood, including abalone.
China’s growing middle class has a near insatiable appetite for abalone.
In Sha nghai, one infa mous restaurant bill recently charged $14,700 for a dish for eig ht people ca l led “half-headed abalones wit h frozen sa ke”.
“Middlemen sell it to a syndicate of Chinese buyers,” one source wit h knowledge of the trade told AFP.
“The middlemen make the rea l money, not the poachers.”