South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association

Name: South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association
Address: 2nd Floor, Harbour Place, Martin Hammerschlag Way, Cape Town, ZA
Telephone: +27 (0)21 425 2727

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South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association

SADSTIA is an association of South African trawler owners and operators.

It is a recognised industrial body that interacts with government, non-governmental organisations and other interested parties for the benefit of the South African deep-sea trawling industry. SADSTIA and its affiliates represent all right-holders in the deep-sea trawling industry, accounting for 100% of the hake landed by this fishery. The Association is governed by its members and an executive committee is responsible for its management. The chairman and/or deputy chairman and an executive secretary take care of the day-to-day management of the association.

23/09/2026

A Review of International Experiences in the Security of Tenure in Fishing Rights, prepared by Prof. Kevern Cochrane . The report was commissioned by SADSTIA to inform the conversation around possible revisions to South Africa's Marine Living Resources Act, which was passed in 1998 and is being considered for update.

Prof. Cochrane is one of the world's most respected fisheries management experts. He served for many years at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome and is co-author, with Serge Garcia, of A Fishery Manager's Guidebook, a globally recognised reference text. He started his fisheries career in South Africa.

Prof. Cochrane's review examines how a wide range of countries structure fishing rights, drawing on the experience of Australia, Canada, Iceland, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Peru and the United States. Some of these systems issue rights in perpetuity. Others issue them for a fixed period with strong legal commitments to renewal. The duration of rights varies considerably, as does the regulatory environment around them.

His report does not argue that any single approach is correct. It identifies the principles that emerge from international experience and considers their relevance to the South African context, particularly for capital-intensive fisheries such as the deep-sea trawl fishery for hake.

The findings will be unpacked across several posts this month. The full report is available here: https://f.mtr.cool/a2ec1qr4us

21/09/2026

A summary of what Dr Kevern Cochrane's international review actually found.

Duration drives investment. Fishing rights of sufficient duration are essential for giving right holders the confidence to invest in vessels, processing facilities, staff and the long-term sustainability of the fishery. This pattern holds across very different countries, fisheries, regulatory environments and political systems.

Duration is not a substitute for good management. The review is clear on this. Secure tenure has to operate alongside strong science-based stock assessments, effective regulation and transparent governance. Where any of those are missing, no amount of rights security will produce a well-managed fishery.

Governments may legitimately want flexibility. The review acknowledges that governments may want to retain flexibility to pursue social, political or economic objectives through fisheries allocation. In such cases, any planned transitions and the criteria for renewal should be clearly articulated and transparently applied, so that right holders and the financial institutions that lend to them can plan accordingly.

Duration matters most in capital-intensive fisheries. In mature, well-regulated fisheries where substantial investment in vessels and processing is required for participation, the duration and security of rights can play an important role in supporting investment, employment, product quality, SMME development and stewardship of the resource.

That is the international evidence. The review presents it without advocating a single position.

Download the full report at https://f.mtr.cool/i3yb1v1vv5

17/09/2026

A note on who wrote the report we have been sharing this month.

Dr Kevern Cochrane is a fisheries scientist with a career that started in South Africa. He served for many years at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, working on fisheries management policy at a global level. He is co-author, with Dr Serge Garcia, of A Fishery Manager's Guidebook, a globally recognised reference work used by fisheries managers, scientists and policymakers around the world.

Dr Cochrane is known for being independent and nuanced. He does not argue simplistically. His review on fisheries tenure, commissioned by SADSTIA, draws on the actual experience of countries that have tried different approaches. It builds its case from international evidence, not from policy preference.

The choice of an independent expert to write this kind of review matters. South African fisheries policy will continue to be debated. The most useful thing any industry association can do in that debate is to bring credible, evidence-based research into the room and let the evidence speak.

This week's LinkedIn article unpacks the full study in more depth, with the international comparisons, the principles and the nuance about the trade-offs all laid out properly.

➡️ Find the full report at https://f.mtr.cool/o4b4nwqv58

16/09/2026

We know that when it comes to biodiversity, management is everything 🌊

The research behind our March mailer suggests that improved fisheries management could increase sustainable catches by an estimated 16 million tons per year.

By those calculations, that could help protect over 1 million km² of rainforest that might otherwise be cleared for agriculture.

The point is not “no fishing restrictions” whatsoever, but getting the balance right: protect ocean ecosystems and avoid shifting pressure onto land.

Learn more at https://sadstia.co.za/fishing-and-biodiversity-understanding-the-bigger-picture/

15/09/2026

Next time you are standing at the freezer, turn the pack of hake over and look for a small blue ecolabel.

It takes up almost no space and it carries a lot of information. It means an independent body assessed the fishery that fish came from. Whether there is enough hake in the water. What else the fishing affects. Whether the whole operation is run by people who adjust when the science changes.

It also means the assessment gets repeated. There is an audit every year. Every five years the full re-assessment starts again from the beginning, and South Africa's hake trawl fishery has now been through that five times, the first in 2004.

One small label, and twenty-two years of checking behind it.

➡️ What the label means: https://sadstia.co.za/the-msc-certification/

09/09/2026

A vessel comes alongside in Saldanha before the town is properly awake.

By the time the first crates are moving, a chain of other things has already started. A processing shift clocks in. A truck booked last week gets loaded. A supplier who sells nothing but gloves and boots has a reason to invoice someone. Somewhere in the town a household plans its week around a boat that came in on time.

None of that is visible from a supermarket freezer.

The fifth MSC re-certification is usually read as an environmental result, and it is. It is also the reason that chain keeps moving. Certification keeps the ecolabel on the box, and the ecolabel is what keeps international buyers ordering. That access sustains an estimated 12 400 direct and indirect jobs and contributes around R8.5 billion to the South African economy every year.

Repeat that morning in Cape Town, Gansbaai, Mossel Bay and Gqeberha. Then repeat it for twenty-two years.

Sustainability is often described as a cost an industry carries. In these towns it reads the other way around.

➡️ More in the 2025 Annual Review: https://sadstia.co.za/publications-and-media/annual-reviews/

07/09/2026

Twenty-two years ago, South Africa's trawl fishery for hake did something no hake fishery had done before. It asked to be judged.

The Marine Stewardship Council assessment looks at whether there is enough fish in the water, the environment that is impacted by fishing, and whether the people managing the fishery respond when the evidence changes. In 2004 the fishery went through that process and passed – the first fishery of its kind in the world to do so.

This year South Africa's trawl fishery for hake passed for the fifth time in a row.

What makes that harder than it sounds is that the test keeps changing. Independent auditors check the fishery every year, and every five years the whole assessment starts again from the beginning, against a Standard that has grown more demanding as scientific understanding of the ocean has improved. What passed in 2004 would not be enough today.

The bar kept moving, and the fishery kept clearing it.

➡️ Read what the MSC Fishery Standard asks for: https://sadstia.co.za/the-msc-certification/

26/08/2026

MSC certification is easy to picture as a stamp you earn once and keep. It is not.

Every five years, South Africa's hake trawl fishery is re-assessed against one of the toughest standards in world fishing. Independent auditors check three things: whether enough fish are left in the ocean, what the fishing does to everything around it, and whether the whole operation is well run.

Behind that are real measures. Science-based quotas. Trawling kept to a ring-fenced area covering about 4.4 percent of South Africa's waters. An observer programme, now in its twenty-first year, recording interactions with vulnerable species and seabed habitats.

Held since 2004, and re-earned ever since.

➡️ https://sadstia.co.za/good-news-for-fish-lovers-sa-hake-keeps-its-ecolabel/

21/08/2026

Every five years, the South African trawl fishery for hake goes back under review.

Independent MSC assessors work through the stock science, the fishery's environmental impact and the government management measures behind it, line by line. They look for gaps rather than reasons to pass.

The fishery has now come through its fifth full re-assessment and kept its MSC certification, first earned in 2004 and renewed in 2009, 2015 and 2021. That is more than twenty years of holding a standard that has to be re-earned every time.

The record holds not because the work is easy, but because each new condition gets met as it arrives. That is what sustainable management looks like from the inside.

➡️ Follow along for more on the certification at https://sadstia.co.za/the-msc-certification/

13/08/2026

POV: You are on the deck of the Santo do Mar, and the swell ahead is taller than the vessel.

This is Skipper Jerome Koopman's own footage, filmed as the trawler pushes through a heavy sea. No commentary. Just a few seconds of what it feels like to be out there.

It is the part of this fishery the numbers never show. Behind the quotas and the certification are real crews, heading into conditions most of us will never see, to bring back one of the country's most important sources of protein.

The science matters. So do the people who work these waters.

➡️ See more from the fishery at https://sadstia.co.za/publications-and-media/annual-reviews/

Address

2nd Floor, Harbour Place, Martin Hammerschlag Way
Cape Town

Telephone

+27 (0)21 425 2727

Website

http://sadstia.co.za/

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