South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association

Here is a piece of South African fisheries history worth knowing.

In 1999, scientists Manuel Barange and José de Oliveira asked whether a cheaper system could replace the research surveys for anchovy and sardine. They found that it could not.

With both surveys running, the anchovy fishery could sustain around 230 000 tons a year. With none, that dropped to 168 000 tons, a loss of more than a quarter of the catch. The surveys cost about R1.8 million a year to run, and returned more than R130 million a year in value to the industry.

Hake works differently to anchovy, so those exact figures do not transfer. The lesson does. A small, steady investment in science protects a far larger return.

➡️ Explore the numbers behind the fishery at https://sadstia.co.za/publications-and-media/annual-reviews/

Twice a year, a research vessel leaves port to count fish that no one has caught yet.

That is what a fishery-independent survey does. It does not measure what the fishing industry lands. It measures what scientists find at sea, along the west coast in summer and the south coast in autumn.

It is one of the most interesting parts of how Cape hake is managed, as well as one of the most important.
Catch records tell you what came out of the water, and the survey tells you what is there, year in and year out, in the same areas, using the same methodology. Sustainable quotas depend on scientists being able to use both sets of data.

➡️ Learn more about the science behind the South African trawl fishery at https://sadstia.co.za/management-markets/

A research survey at sea is one of the cheapest things an R8.5 billion per year industry does, and one of the most important.

Each year, scientists with the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment survey the hake resource off South Africa's coast. The estimates they bring back feed into a fisheries management system that now stretches back over four decades. Their research is one of the things Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) auditors rely on to assess the fishery and certify it as sustainable and well-managed.

The value runs in a chain: The survey produces the data. The data support the fishery's management. The certification opens the European markets Cape hake depends on. Behind it all sit billions of rand in annual sales and thousands of jobs in coastal towns.

That is what regular, twice-yearly research surveys protect. They are not an expense at the edge of the industry, but the foundation it rests on.

➡️ Learn about the science that underpins the MSC certification at https://sadstia.co.za/management-markets/

A trawl net at the end of its working life used to have one destination. Landfill.

In South Africa's hake fishery, that has changed. Worn and damaged nets are collected and recycled, kept out of the ground and given a second life. Shredded, washed and densified into clean plastic flakes, the old nets become raw material for new, high-value plastic products. The process keeps waste out of landfill and creates value in the coastal towns where the fishery operates.

It is a small piece of a larger shift in how the industry treats its own footprint. The same fishery that maps where it trawls, protects seabirds and guards vulnerable seabed ecosystems also asked a plainer question. What happens to our gear when we are finished with it?

The answer used to be landfill. It is not anymore.

➡️ See more at https://f.mtr.cool/njyrcxhbab

Bottom trawling off South Africa happens inside a line most people have never heard of.

It is called the trawl ring-fence, and it holds the entire hake trawl fishery to grounds that have been fished for decades. That footprint covers 4.8 percent of South Africa's ocean territory. The rest is closed to trawling, and the fishery is not permitted to expand into it.

The line was not drawn overnight. It began in 2008 as a voluntary undertaking by the industry, before it was written into trawl permit conditions and made binding. It was reinforced in 2019, when several marine protected areas were declared inside the trawl footprint, and again in 2025, when the industry worked with environmental scientists and government to establish a set of voluntary seabed management areas.

What that leaves is a fishery operating inside a footprint that is fixed, mapped and scientifically understood. Smaller over time, not larger.

It is the part of the trawling story that is rarely told.

➡️ Read the full piece at https://f.mtr.cool/tybyxboayl

Seabirds have always followed trawlers. Gulls, albatrosses, petrels and gannets trail the vessels for an easy meal, drawn to the activity at the stern.

For years that instinct came at a terrible cost. As the gear was worked, birds struck the steel warp cables running from the vessel to the net, and many were killed. It was one of the most serious environmental problems facing trawl fisheries worldwide, and the South African hake fishery was not exempt from it.

The answer turned out to be strikingly simple. A bird-scaring line, a length of rope strung with bright streamers, is flown above the cables while the vessel fishes. The streamers flicker and move, and the birds keep clear of the danger zone. No new technology, no real expense, just a visible barrier between a seabird and a cable.

Once the lines became a permit requirement across the fleet, with independent observers confirming they were deployed correctly, seabird deaths in the trawl fishery fell by around 90 percent. Albatross mortality dropped further still.

A serious problem, met with a simple answer and the data to prove it worked.

➡️ More on how the fishery protects marine life at https://f.mtr.cool/gksnmnnoqd

In Cape Town, Saldanha, Gansbaai, Mossel Bay and Gqeberha, the companies that make up South Africa's hake fishery are not only employers. They fund school feeding schemes, back youth programmes, support local NGOs and help keep emergency services running, often for years on end and usually with no announcement.

One Cape Town dining room has served meals to people in need since 1935, with the fishing industry providing protein along the way. A small fishing company has stood behind a township education NGO for more than a decade. These are not campaigns. They are commitments that outlast any single date on the calendar.

Nelson Mandela International Day on 18 July, asks for 67 minutes of service. It is a good moment to notice work that, in this industry, runs all year round.

➡️ Read more in the 2025 Annual Review at https://f.mtr.cool/siutcumyzb



Image: Fouzia van der Fort for AtlanticSun.co.za