DEAR Editor,-
How many Parks Board officials does it take to capture a schoolboy with one undersized crayfish? Well, you may be surprised to learn that I witnessed the event and the answer is seven.
The laws relating to the capture of East Coast crayfish (Panulirus homarus) were formulated in the 1960s by Dr Paddy Berry, who then worked for the Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI) under the directorship of Dr Alan Heydorn, South Africa’s most renowned marine scientist.
Dr. Berry’s research was translated into the laws that govern the capture of KwaZulu-Natal crayfish today, 50 years later. In the ’60s there were no laws for the poor old crayfish and on a good day we could take out 30, or even 50.
Most people will never have caught crayfish by diving for them and probably think it’s a doddle. What you didn’t know is that diving for crayfish on the East Coast of South Africa is a very risky business.
Crayfish hide in holes under rocks, normally more than 10 metres deep and inside these holes are moray eels, who have a symbiotic relationship with crayfish to protect them from octopuses and humans. They have three large, very sharp teeth running down the centre of the mouth, inflicting serious and painful injuries when bitten.
Swimming out through the surf in diving equipment is normally quite hazardous, but swimming back after two or three hours of very hard aerobic exercise and up a rip current, towing your very hard-earned catch of eight crayfish (if you were lucky) and a fish, is not for the faint-hearted.
When the shore break finally throws you onto the beach and you crawl up it totally exhausted, grateful to have been given a chance to live another day, you have to put up with derogatory comments from bystanders and assaults from the Parks Board.
The law to do with crayfishing is a travesty. In the ’60s, when we considered any crayfish controls, we were concerned that even in those days people were catching 100lb potato sackfuls and selling them. At low tide, where I lived at Brighton Beach, you could catch such a sack in an hour, as there were no rules in those days.
We decided there should be a bag limit of 16, later reduced to eight and further decided that crayfish in berry (the breeders) and ‘soft shells’ should be protected by introducing a minimum size limit of 65mm along the carapace. There was absolutely no scientific reason for this restriction.
Today, if you are only allowed to take eight, then it doesn’t matter if they are soft shell or undersized. They taste the same and if you wrestle a soft shell out of it’s hole, it dies anyway. The law is clearly designed to allow fat, overpaid Parks Board officials to arrest young schoolboys and/or get bribes from their mothers.
The great news is that those youngsters who we are trying to bring into this unbelievable sport, don’t do drugs, don’t smoke and as yet are not involved in bribery and corruption. Why are they the target of the Parks Board, rather than the criminals who catch dozens of shad a day, or break most of the other marine laws?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the law in this country would go after the real criminals rather than schoolboys trying to learn about the huge number of ridiculous laws that have been formulated to swell the coffers of our provincial government and do not protect our marine environment. There are around 600 laws related to the capture of marine life off the KwaZulu-Natal coast.
BRETT ADDISON
Uvongo
