Programme director
Our host the Mayor, Mr Peter Scholtz
Director-General, Ms Nosipho Ngcaba
Director-General, Dr Monde Mayekiso and all your colleagues from the department and related entities
Members of the media
Ladies and gentlemen
This year marks the 17th anniversary of the call at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to declare 8 June World Oceans Day. This day is subsequently celebrated all over the world and recently, in 2008, was officially declared by the United Nations.
The main objective of World Oceans Day is to draw attention to the wonders of the World of Oceans and to promote the important role of these ‘blue backyard’ worlds. We are all aware that often the role of oceans in our lives is underemphasised.
With oceans covering over 70% of the earth’s surface it is pivotal that we recognise their role in regulating climate and weather, as many people remain largely unaware of the key connections between a healthy ocean, a healthy climate and our future. The theme for this year’s World Ocean Day is “one ocean, one climate, one future”. This theme is to bring this interconnectivity to the fore.
Within this context, as citizens of this world, we have a shared responsibility to ensure that we respond to the challenges of climate change and the oceans cannot be ignored as partners in the fight to address this matter.
The question we ask ourselves is “what legacy around oceans do we want to leave behind for future generations?”
I believe the answer is simple we want to leave behind healthy oceans, filled with colourful and diverse coral reefs, with plenty and diverse marine species.
This means that as global citizens of today we have a responsibility to ensure the protection and conservation of our marine life, including our marine species.
So today as we celebrate World Oceans Day it is appropriate that we highlight one of the oceans’ most magnificent and oldest creatures, namely the shark. Again you will appreciate that 2009 has been declared the year of the shark.
World ocean organisations and specifically the global shark networks, have called for a year of awareness on sharks as recent findings of the global shark assessment indicate that at current rates of decline, extinction of the most threatened species of shark is forecast in 10 to 15 years. Studies of oceanic sharks estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the heavily fished species are gone.
The threats shark’s faces in this modern world of human domination are daunting. The enormous scale of commercial longline fishing and bycatch, the methodical massacre for shark fin soup, habitat loss and destruction, particularly of nursery areas, pollution and a variety of smaller operations that have great impact taken together, are the main threats to the future of sharks.
As South Africa we have progressed in our understanding of the importance of sharks. For several years we have committed to study these animals both for improving our understanding of their often secretive behaviour and for understanding our marine ecosystems. Sharks are top predators, feed at the top of food chains. By monitoring their condition individually and at the population level, we can create a health index of the layers below them that they feed on.
South Africa, in addition to our research efforts, has also taken management measures to reduce the impact of fisheries on sharks.
South Africa is intending to terminate the pelagic shark fishery this year and have set measure in place effect this. The fishery is in its final phase of termination with seven companies currently operating under exemption.
The intention this year is that the exemptions holders will be allocated fishing rights in the swordfish and tuna longline fishery where pelagic sharks will be managed as a bycatch species. The number of right holders in the demersal shark longline fishery has also been drastically reduced to only six right holders as a precautionary measure, and further reductions will be determined based on the stock status of the directed species.
We need to look at all these efforts within the context of ensuring environmental protection coupled with fostering positive business strategies for longevity.
In 1997 the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) developed an International Plan of Action for the conservation and management of sharks (IPOA-sharks). The IPOA-sharks is a voluntary instrument that was elaborated within the framework of the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishers, to which South Africa is a signatory. The IPOA-sharks encourages all states to draft national plans that would ensure the conservation and management of sharks and their long-term sustainable use (NPOA-sharks).
Already South Africa has taken a lead in being the first country globally to provide protected status for the great white shark in 1991, which has resulted in increased nature-based tourism or ecotourism and contributing at least R50m per year through the shark cage diving industry. Proposals are also being made that the Great White Sharks should be marketed as part of the Big Seven (Big five with two marine animals, sharks and whales being included)
With over 150 different shark diving sites worldwide, it is estimated that over 200 000 divers enter the water annually to dive specifically with sharks.
The potential benefits of shark conservation are great. In protecting a host of large, charismatic, but particularly vulnerable species, shark conservation offers the opportunity to protect not just sharks, but the myriad other species and ecosystems with which and within which sharks interact. Hence, at stake are not just the sharks, but our still vastly misunderstood or understudied marine realm.
Later this year South Africa will publish its plan of action for the conservation and management of sharks, thereby placing South Africa as a world leader in shark conservation and management where we rightly belong.
The plan could include the following:
* Research on sharks done by South Africa and key recent findings
* Collaborations on shark research
* Budget spent on shark research
* Shark attacks particularly the misunderstanding on these creatures
* Marine protected areas and the protection of shark species in this context.
I would like to impress upon us all that as we jointly walk on this path to ensure that our resources are taken care of, we need to do as President Jacob Zuma said in the State of The Nation Address, “Laat ons mekaar se hande vat, en saam oplossings vind in die gees van 'n Suid Afrikaanse gemeenskap. Die tyd het gekom om harder te werk.”
As South Africans we have proven this to be a truth. All the time when we have looked a challenge in the face and boldly confronted it as a people, we have overcome.
Even as we head full speed into our work, Director-General, we will forge partnerships with the stakeholders from other government departments and entities, the relevant networks and civil society organisations, as well as especially our counterparts and colleagues from the continent and the world broadly. We will discuss and have the necessary debates that will enrich our knowledge and help us to find workable solutions and new ways of doing things.
I am deeply honoured to have this platform this morning. I believe that as people we have a lot that we are responsible for and therefore joint efforts towards the necessary resolutions will be necessary.
Lastly, I do want to announce that as we celebrate Marine Week in October, we will extend that week and make it Marine Month.
I thank you
Issued by: Department of Water and Environmental Affairs
8 June 2009
