Status of the South African aquaculture sector is also known as the aquaculture year book. To monitor the performance of the aquaculture industry in South Africa, the DFFE collects, analyses and interprets aquaculture production data annually. The data collection process takes into account freshwater and marine sectors, food safety programme, environmental and aquatic aspects, research advances and the economic performance of the entire aquaculture industry. The main purpose of the South Africa’s aquaculture yearbook is to provide access to information and ensure transparency related to the status of aquaculture sector in South Africa.

The status of South African marine resources reports produced by the department are recognised as an important contribution to our understanding of South Africa’s exploited marine resources. The information is presented in a way that is of use to both scientists, fisheries managers; fishing industry stakeholders and the public. The maintenance of the high standard of research on our exploited marine resources is essential especially given the many challenges that face the sector including the imminent implementation of the Small Scale Fisheries Policy. The report presents the most up-to-date information and analysis of the status of marine fishery resources in South Africa at the time of compilation per document featured in the series.

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment is the lead department for the oceans economy aquaculture focus area and its deliverables. The lab concluded that South Africa’s aquaculture sector has a high growth potential due to an increasing demand of fish products due to the increasing global population; increasing income by the middle class in developing countries and more awareness on the dietary benefits offered by fish products. Moreover, the capture fisheries yield has been plateauing over the past decade while aquaculture continues to grow over 7.5% per annum. This growth is expected to continue at a higher rate in the future.

This is the final report of the project titled “Towards Enhancing Contributions of Inland Fisheries to Rural Livelihoods: An Empirical Assessment of Freshwater Fish Stocks, Fisheries Potential, Market Value Chains, Governance and Co-Management Arrangements” funded by the Water Research Commission (project No. K5/2497/4). It is a follow-on project of the project titled “Baseline and scoping study on the development and sustainable use of storage dams for inland fisheries and contributions to rural livelihoods” that had also been funded by the WRC (project No. WRCK5/1959/4 reported in Britz et al., 2015). The project set out to test the recommendations made by the preceding baseline and scoping study with regard to the formalisation of an inland fisheries sector in South Africa. The baseline and scoping study recommended that the establishment of fisheries should be based on a developmental approach (a move away from the conservation oriented historical approach); on an inclusive approach to deal with historical marginalisation of (small-scale) fishing communities; and on a defensible scientific approach that could ensure biological and socio-economic sustainability of the sector.

In this report, the evolution of inland fisheries policy in South Africa are reviewed; the current fishery uses and issues characterised; the environmental, economic and social potential of the resource discussed; and the existing regulatory and institutional framework evaluated in terms of modern fishery governance norms and national development objectives. Based on the research and consultations with public and private sector stakeholders, the report concludes with a set of recommended governance principles and institutional arrangements to inform the development of a South African inland fisheries governance, institutional and organisational arrangements.

This review considers gaps and shortcomings in the legal framework and problems with its implementation. It make recommendations for improving implementation of the framework and for legislative reform. Te review report adopts a systems-based approach. Each system is assessed within the context of development, production and postproduction phases of an aquaculture facility to ensure practical assessment of the whole value chain. The report assesses the system to be governed (STBG), the current governing system (GS) and the interactions within and between the systems. The system to be governed includes the social, economic and environmental elements of the industry while the governing system constitutes the international, national, provincial and local laws and policies that regulate the aquaculture industry, as well as the institutional arrangements for governing.

MC Ranching (MCR) (Pty) Ltd. (DBA) is applying to undertake ranching of abalone Haliotis midae along an ~4.5 km stretch of coast located 17 km north-west of Strandfontein in the Western Cape. A supply of Haliotis midae spat has been secured from DBA and HIK Abalone Farm (Pty) Ltd to be used for seeding their proposed ranching area. MCR's proposal for the establishment of the pilot abalone ranching operation is set to start as soon as the application process has been finalised, assuming they are successful in this process. MCR have a supply agreement with DBA and HIK Abalone Farm (Pty) Ltd for the supply of spat as required. Each batch of spat to be seeded will have a valid Health Certificate issued by Amanzi Biosecurity.

The documents below list the annual scientific output of the Branch: Fisheries Management. within each document, the output is arranged by category, as follows: peer-reviewed publications; theses / dissertations / tertiary projects; book chapters, published reports and popular articles; contributions to symposia and conferences, and public presentations; contributions to workshops, short courses, and management and scientific bodies; unpublished technical reports; and unpublished working group documents. The final category, which consists of working group documents, represents the core output of the research component of the branch in terms of its line function to provide scientific advice for resource management.