Our talk in May should be of interest to all who live on the Cape Whale Coast. It examines the serious social, political and economic issues around abalone.
Dr Serge Raemaekers will be our speaker on Tuesday 19 May at 17h30 at the Green House. His topic is Economic and Social Consequences of Abalone Poaching.
Dr Serge Raemaekers is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Environmental Evaluation Unit based at UCT. His research area is systems thinking and fisheries governance theory with the aim to recommend management approaches that are more applicable to the realities of small-scale fishers.
The rise of organised illegal fishing and trade in abalone from the late 1990s destabilised South Africa’s historically stable, quota-managed fishery, culminating in its closure in 2008. Serge will describe the historical context of the fishery, including the evolution of South Africa’s science-based abalone fishery management system. He will review the proposed plans to combat illegal fishing and the black market trade in abalone.