The navy’s big day . . . or a damp squib in tons of squid

FIRST came the warship. Then the fighter jets. As if netting squid for two months in the Southern Ocean wasn’t difficult enough, now this: a standoff with the South African military.

That — and foul weather — is not what you want when you’re carrying 300 tons of calamari.

So, ignoring radio commands to report to the nearest South African port, the Chineseregistered Fu Yuan Yu 7880 trawler and its sister vessel made a run for it.

Pursued by one of Africa’s strongest powers, escape was impossible, and last Sunday the “illegal” trawlers were escorted to East London. Fisheries officials even picked up an illegal Indonesian trawler en route.

Some described this past week as the navy’s finest hour since the dawn of democracy.

But it has now emerged that the trawlers’ collective cargo of more than 600 tons of squid and by-catch may have been netted outside South Africa’s economic exclusion zone, which juts out into the Southern Ocean. Worse still, the trawlers may have applied for permission via the Chinese embassy to traverse South Africa’s offshore territory.

A naval source said the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries ops room was not manned on Sunday, “so they could not check the request that the Chinese had submitted”. The source said the department had not processed the Chinese embassy’s request, so the trawlers “were not poaching and had followed the procedures, so cannot be charged”.

Hawks spokesman Robert Netshiunda confirmed that investigators “haven’t established whether the squid was caught in our waters”.

Bomikazi Molapo, spokesman for the fisheries department, said permission to enter South African waters needed to be granted before vessels arrived, not during the journey. No such request had been received. “The influx of these vessels and the reasons therefore are being investigated.”

This week, the skippers of the three boats appeared in court charged with failure to comply with instructions and fishing without a permit.

Public sympathy appears to lie with the South African officials, perhaps prompted by stories of “rogue fleets” of Chinese trawlers pillaging the African coast. But industry experts said South Africa’s territorial waters were relatively well policed due to an organised deep-sea trawl industry and state-of-the-art vessel tracking technology.

A recent US study ranked South Africa fifth among 27 major fishing nations in its capacity “to effectively regulate fishing pressure in the presence of illegal and unreported catch”.

Industry executives doubted whether trawlers could have harvested that much squid in the “closed season” without being detected. The deep-sea trawl association also urged caution.

In a statement, the Chinese embassy denied any wrongdoing, saying the trawlers had the necessary documentation.

“These vessels were on their way back from legal fishing in the high sea of southwest Atlantic Ocean when they had to enter South African waters due to bad weather,” it said.

But some fisheries experts said foreign vessels still needed to stick to the rules by requesting permission when entering South Africa’s waters. And fleeing didn’t help.

Whatever the outcome of the investigations, the big winner appears to be the defence force.

Shaheen Moolla, a former chief director of the fisheries department, said: “That is the positive side to this — we are finally actually patrolling our waters and the open seas issue is perhaps coming to an end.”

That is the positive side — we are actually patrolling our waters