Two weeks before the crayfishing season opens a poacher was caught red handed behind the Boulevard Centre in Ballito on Saturday but managed to escape before being arrested.
Brad Hort, who works at Mo-Zam-Bik restaurant, told the Courier that some men habitually loitered near the back gate to the Boulevard Centre’s employees’ parking and he had gone around the back to ask them to leave.
“That is when I saw this guy skulking in a corner. The rest said his name was David,” Hort said.
When he looked closer, Hort saw the man had a bucket full of undersized crayfish he was attempting to sell along with a load of mussels.
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Hort called a local security company, to whom ‘David’ said he had a permit.
However, when the police were called, David suddenly had to take a phone call and disappeared back into the parking and down into the centre.
“The dead crayfish were taken as evidence, but I took the mussels back down to the rocks at the beach. Hopefully they will be able to recover.”
The season for harvesting crayfish opens on March 1 until October 31.
The minimum size for catches is 65mm measured from the point where the tail meets the body to the tip of the spine between the crayfish’s eyes.
No more than eight crayfish are allowed to be collected on a given day.
The crayfish season closes between November and February as this is the crustaceans’ breeding period and removing/breaking breeding pairs has a devastating effect on the species.
Tidal Tao’s Duncan Pritchard said crayfish poaching was a problem all around the country and had led to extremely strict measures being put into place on the west coast and in the Cape to help protect the species.
“What is shocking is if you go snorkeling just before the season opens you will see plenty of crayfish. By the time the season has been open for about five days we see almost none.”
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