Dark side to abalone loved by Hongkongers

Nearly every house in Hawston has a boat in its yard, sometimes two. It takes a moment to realize many are out of action, grass sprouting through holes in hulls that haven't touched water for years. They are relics of another era, when people fished and the ocean provided more than enough.

The languishing boats and other economic problems in Hawston are the result of changes in the market for South African abalone, a curious fist-sized sea snail that is a highly prized morsel in Hong Kong.

It is also the unwitting instigator of 30 years of trouble for fishing communities along Africa's southern coast. Abalone was abundant and especially tasty, yet the demand largely put the village and fishers out of business, or made them criminals.

Raphael Fisher was born into fishing, as just about everyone was in Hawston. He grew up diving for the abalone that locals call perlemoen - or "perly" - in the rocky coves. He was learning to work his father's boat in his late teens. Every boy wanted to be a perly fisher, he said.

But over the past three decades poachers have swept up every snail they could find - every sackful a fat payday at US$50 (HK$390) a kilogram. It's reduced the endangered abalone to unprecedented low levels, wildlife groups say.

At first, South Africa banned abalone fishing completely. Now, strict quotas give Fisher and other small operators lucky enough to get them the rights to catch 120 kilograms a year. Hardly anything.

"The fishing has all been taken away," he says.

It's why a different poaching - not for big profits but to put food on the table - has also ensnared so many traditional fishers up and down this coast.

A 2022 report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime estimated the illegal trade heading to Hong Kong was worth nearly US$1 billion between 2000 and 2016 - and growing.

The total abalone quota in South Africa is set at a maximum of 100 tonnes a year.

Hong Kong is importing 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes of illegal South African abalones a year. Some are moved on to other big markets in China, Japan and Taiwan.

Organized crime and turf battles over illegal abalone sometimes marked by brutal gang killings have overwhelmed coastal communities. Thousands of poor young men have been drawn in as foot soldiers.

Hawston and its troubles are likely unknown in Hong Kong, where the upper-end Forum restaurant offers cooked South African abalone at around HK$1,478 a can for customers to take away.

Abalone is more than a delicious treat for millions of Chinese, says Wendy Chan, managing director at seafood restaurant Lamma Rainbow. "It carries a symbolic meaning. After you have abalone you will become wealthy or it will bring you good luck in the upcoming year."

It's a sign of prestige or something you would give as a gift. Chan also rates South African abalone highly, as so many do, with its rich taste and slightly chewy texture.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature says nearly half of all abalone species around the world are threatened with extinction, many hit by pollution and climate change, part of the larger story of devastation of marine wildlife.

Danie Keet, chairman of the Community Against Abalone Poaching group, has seen gang-related abalone poaching play out for 15 years in nearby Gansbaai town. The poachers arrive in broad daylight on pickup trucks and in their wetsuits, rubber duck boats towed behind.

It's highly organized. Divers prise abalone off reefs and get them to shore in bags. Runners hide them in dunes for others to take to stash houses. Lookouts watch for police and warn the divers, who keep phones sealed watertight in condoms.

They are all the first cogs in a US$60 million-a-year business, said the Traffick Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network.

Keet says authorities lack the resources to patrol many hundreds of kilometers of coastline, and poaching is embedded.

"In the beginning they dived at night a lot," Keet says "That changed as they noticed they can just get away with it."

The demand has spurred an alternative to wild abalone - farmed abalone. HIK Abalone has a total of 13 million abalone at any one time at two south coast farms.

Abalone as far as the eye can see - from tiny specks to as big as your hand - in rows and rows of open-top tanks. None have felt the ocean or a rock. Here, they cruise surprisingly quickly under black plastic cones they have for underwater hiding places. They are bred, fed and set to be killed at the farm to be shipped, dried or canned, to Hong Kong, a few exported live for high-end customers.

Farms are tinkering with the abalone life cycle by selective breeding to get them to grow to a size they can be sold and eaten as fast as possible, says chief executive Bertus van Oordt.

"Our main aim is to get them bigger, faster," he says.

The farms that have sprouted up have no role in conservation.

Faced with the choice of his life when abalone fishing was banned and poaching ramped up, Fisher, 53, found another way. He works at the HIK farm.

His father, a pioneer of Hawston's fishing community for years, was denied a quota, his livelihood cut off with a swipe of a pen from someone in an office.

The younger Fisher's job at HIK has enabled him to keep two small boats going. They are guarded in his yard by two of his other prized assets, dogs Zara and Toby, growling precautions against the crime born out of unemployment and poverty.

Fisher does fish his abalone quota, banding in a small consortium with others to share costs, but it's a part-time affair now. With sunglasses perched on top of a baseball cap he scans the sky and the sea as his father might have, assessing the weather and if he can go fishing this weekend. Not necessarily for abalone. Just fishing.

ASSOCIATED PRESS