Hong Kong link to abalone poaching

They’re separated by more than 11,000km of ocean, but a golden thread connects the Western Cape and Hong Kong: abalone.

Nearly all of the millions of molluscs poached off the Western Cape every year, then dried, end up in the special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China, which is only two-thirds the size of the City of Johannesburg.

A report by Traffic, which monitors global trade in wildlife, says demand in Hong Kong is at the heart of the poaching industry which has virtually wiped out SA’s wild abalone.

SA’s neighbours are also implicated, acting as middlemen for nearly half of poached abalone shipped to Hong Kong between 2000 and 2016. Countries involved include landlocked nations such as Swaziland and Zimbabwe, as well as Namibia and Mozambique.

Traffic’s report, titled

says “interventions and collaborations at the international level are required” and makes seven broad recommendations to stem the trade in poached abalone:

● The development by legal traders of “a robust traceability system for all abalone products exported from SA”;

● Research to develop a better understanding of the domestic economics of illegal fishery;

● More inspections of key SA ports, bearing in mind that 98% of dried abalone reaching Hong Kong arrives by air;

● The development of a multiagency task force including the SA Revenue Service, Financial Intelligence Centre, police and Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries;

● Regional collaboration in sub-Saharan Africa to restrict abalone exports through neighbouring countries;

● An assessment of the socioeconomic and security risks of the possible collapse of the abalone fishery; and

● International trade regulation by listing abalone under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Between 2000 and 2016, says the report, two-thirds of SA abalone traded internationally was poached. This involved 96m individual molluscs, or more than 15,000 a day.

The average value of poached abalone between 2000 and 2016 was R628m a year, “on a par with two of [SA’s] most valuable export fisheries: squid and rock lobster”.

Authors Nicola Okes Markus Bürgener, Sade Moneron and Julian Rademeyer said the risk to the economy of choking poaching are severe.

“Depletion of the stocks not only has long-lasting impacts on the resource and the ecosystem, but also robs the economy of potential revenue that could be gained through a sustainable abalone fishery,” they said.