South African abalone at risk as China gangs drive poaching

DEMAND for abalone by Chinese gangs has caused South Africa’s stocks of the marine molluscs to be depleted at a record rate, costing the country $60million (£46million) annually, a report has warned.

Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network, said the country’s coasts had been stripped of at least 96million abalone in the last 18 years, with 9.6 million poached in 2016 alone.

“These are almost the highest – if not the highest – poaching levels we have seen in the last 20 or more years,” said the report published on Tuesday.

Despite a mounting risk that abalone could become extinct, they were removed from the CITES list of at-risk species in 2010.

Chinese criminal syndicates use crystal meth as a reward for gangs in the Western Cape, a region that includes Cape Town, to dive for the coveted delicacy. It is fished illegally and outside of quota systems, Traffic said.

“Driven by sophisticated transnational networks and local gangs, the illegal abalone trade has been fuelled by deeply entrenched socio-economic disparities,” the report said.

The authors warned that bitter fights over official local fishing quotas and gang violence were pushing people into the trade. Ninety per cent of both legal and illegal exports end up in Hong Kong.

The once abundant high-end delicacy, a chewy sea snail with a distinctive salty taste, is popular at feasts and wedding banquets in the Far East.

The report found that the lack of regulation meant that once the abalone were smuggled out of South Africa, they could be easily resold without fear of detection.