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COVER FEATURE – THE BLUE ECONOMY

The ocean economy is the next untapped frontier for Africa and women will lead it.WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: JAY CABOZSTYLING: ATHI-AFIKILE MYATAZAMAKEUP: GINA MASKELL

Africa’s Water Warriors

Out Of The Blue: The mighty blue ocean is Africa’s next frontier and women will conquer it, said Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission and one of the most influential women on the continent, when FORBES WOMAN AFRICA first met her for a cover interview in July 2015. Spearheaded by the AU’s Agenda 2063, it is building Africa’s so-called Blue Economy – a self-sufficient economy run off the seas by Africans.

What it means is fishing, farming, mining and trading off the sea.

“Africa has actually neglect-ed the fact that it’s almost like a big island with smaller islands – 32 of the 54 countries are either coastal or island states. In fact,

our oceanic space is more than three times our land space. So it is a very important resource and we need to now develop the blue economy as part of the boarder economy. We have developed the first maritime strategy,” says Dlamini-Zuma.

On July 25, 2015, at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the AU launched its Decade of African Seas and Oceans. It noted, even though 90% of Africa’s imports and exports go by sea, the continent it not getting its fair share of the action.

“We do have cargo, we ship hundreds of millions of tonnes in and out, and yet it is transported by other people, giving other people jobs. In the whole value chain,

whether it is transport, cruise ships, the insurance, nothing is in our hands. Even tourism, because we have very good coasts, and some of our places are still very pristine.”

At the forefront, or should we say foreshore, of these is a young vibrant generation of women, who are already getting their feet wet, from the chilly depths of False Bay (in South Africa’s Western Cape) where sharks lurk, to the abalone farms of Gansbaai.

FORBES WOMAN AFRICA highlights the South African entrepreneurs who have made the sea their business, their life. The stories of grit are many. Freediving champion Hanli Prinsloo speaks of the burgeoning business of sea

tourism. Lesley Rochat reveals how a shark named Maxine convinced her to pursue a life of ocean conservation. Alison Kock has spent 10 years researching great white sharks off the shores of False Bay, south of Cape Town, to smash stereotypes surrounding these predators. We also talk with top wildlife photographer and environmentalist Fiona Ayerst, and Roushana Grey takes us to the tide pools of the Atlantic and offers up a seaweed lunch.

These women are changing the way Africans harness the sea, and in the pages that follow, FORBES WOMAN AFRICA’s Cape Town-based photojournalist Jay Caboz dives in, to unlock their secrets of the deep. FW

Hanli Prinsloo

Fiona Ayerst

Lesley Rochat

Roushana Grey

Alison Kock

Meaghen McCord

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When Hanli Prinsloo was little, she dreamt

of being a mermaid. Her ‘ocean’ was the dam near her home on the outskirts of Johannesburg. These days, in the water, when she freedives, she is a mermaid; when she dives up to 65 meters, holding a single breath, on her feet is a mermaid-shaped fin.

“When you go underwater, you don’t talk, you look inwards and you just experience the ocean and the animal and plant life around you. For your mind, being underwater is a state of meditation,” says Prinsloo.

Now, Prinsloo has made the sea her living. She takes tourists to swim with manta rays, frolic with dolphins and look at shoals of fish swirling in the deep.

“It took a remarkably long time for the pennies to drop... People don’t want to travel to shop anymore, or buy things, people are more interested in renting an island than buying a Maserati. They want excep-tional experiences. They want to know their money is spent in an unusual way.

“We teach freediving, yoga and ocean awareness always in conjunction with a hero animal.”

This is the brainchild of Prinsloo; leading the affluent from the boardroom to the bounties of the ocean.

“The people we work with are the decision-makers and

influence-makers. We some-times forget that whether it’s big corporations or govern-ments it’s still people. I feel we need the big decision-makers to understand more than on a scientific level,” says Prinsloo.

Prinsloo’s only problem is that unspoiled beaches are rarer than pearls.

“What really terrifies me now is that while doing all this research for our trips, pristine locations available are becoming less and less. That’s really scary. My fear in our heavily over-exploited world is that the ocean becomes seen more and more as an extraction resource and not an experiential resource,” she says.

Prinsloo fell in love with the ocean through her diving. She has smashed records since 2003 and can hold her breath for up to six minutes.

“The more time I spent in the ocean the more I wanted to protect it. The first thing that unites us all is being in water.”

In 2010, Prinsloo founded the I Am Water Trust, a non-profit organization (NPO) that takes children into the sea for the first time.

“Seeing that transformation happen, seeing that growth from a small person who didn’t think they were capable of certain things, to growing their self-belief is something valuable today.

“As we move more toward an urbanized world that is technology-driven, nature

Hanli Prinsloo

experiences have become so much harder to find in true wilderness. The ocean is our last true blue wilderness.”

Prinsloo claims she is the worst person in the world to be running an NPO, because she is bad at asking for money.

“The ocean conservation that is successful in South Africa is very science heavy, which is good. But, unless that research is translated for the broader Africa public it can’t have any impact.”

Whether it’s to explore or exploit, the South African government believes that the ocean can contribute R177 billion ($12.65 billion) to the GDP by 2033. Under the fast-track Operation Phakisa, an overhaul of the country’s ocean is well on its way. According to Prinsloo, conservation has seen some benefit, but not enough.

“On the one hand, we have to hurry up GDP growth, that’s the exploitation side. Then there is Operation Phakisa’s lesser-known side, the conser-vation. To go from 0.4% to 5% marine protection areas is great. But it’s a very small number.

“Even in California, where there is strong ocean awareness and community, I haven’t spent a day on the beach, even in some of their lesser-known marine protected areas beaches, where I haven’t gone home with my

THE OCEAN IS OUR LAST TRUE BLUE

WILDERNESS

The Mermaid In Meditation

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feet covered in oil because of all the offshore drilling.”

Technology has been a game-changer for the ocean. From massive satellite ocean mapping projects to underwa-ter cameras people can explore the ocean at a fraction of cost.

Prinsloo has found that people on social media will be prepared to share an article, or like a post, but are unwilling to change their lifestyles.

“People will say they are doing great conservation work with millions of likes and followers, I don’t know how that impact translates. I don’t gauge our success through our reach; we don’t need people saying they supported ocean conservation by sharing a David Attenborough video and then they still eat tuna in their sushi. Those are for people sharing for their own personal well-being. Not for the ocean.

“People think ocean conservation is supporting the Sea Shepherd so that another whale doesn’t get killed. At the

end of the day, whether the Shepherd sinks more

whalers, that has less impact on our oceans than us using plastic all the time.”

For someone who spends

most of her days in the ocean, like the mermaid of her childhood, this is a stern warning to the rest of us on land. FW

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Lesley Rochat’s house is called ‘Soulmate by the Sea’. If you look

outside the back you can see why. From here you can see the deep waters of False Bay, where dolphins leap, seals bark and the great white shark lurks. This is where Rochat gave up the money as a financial advisor to pursue the adventurous life of a conservationist, photographer and journalist – all because she met a shark named Maxine at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town.

“[Maxine] was the catalyst that made me change my life, she helped to set me free from the shallow world of finance, to found the non-profit organization, AfriOceans Conservation Alliance, in 2003, and pursue my dream of helping to save our beau-tiful oceans and sharks,” says Rochat.

Since meeting Maxine, Rochat has spent 13 years fighting for ocean conserva-tion. Through her projects, she has touched the lives of more than 30,000 children.

It doesn’t stop there. So determined is Rochat to project the seas that she didn’t need to think twice about swimming naked with sharks in a campaign against drum lines.

“I do not propose you should go out and try the same to strip naked and jump into

Lesley Rochat

Swimming Naked With Sharks To Save Them

not grant us any funding for the work we do in saving the environment upon which we depend.”

Rochat, who grew up in a family of eight girls and one boy, knew she would end up protecting the sea.

“When television came to South Africa, rather late due to the apartheid years, I was a little girl, and there were very few programs to watch. One special program, however, which I loved and would not miss a single episode of was Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. I thank [Cousteau] for introducing me to the magical world beneath the waves.”

Something that may get Rochat, called the Shark Warrior, up in arms is people talking about exploiting South Africa’s burgeoning Blue Economy. She believes that

it has potential to grow the economy but needs a firm hand. This is why she is on the Global Ocean Commission to come up with solutions to ocean decline.

It’s going to be a hard list to tackle. The oceans face rising demand for resources, technological advances, decline of fish stocks, climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss, and weak high seas governance. “Every species matters. Yet less than one per cent of the

global ocean is fully protected and species extinction rates are at least 100 times those in pre-human times and expect-ed to continue to accelerate into the future.

“We have entered the 6th Mass Extinction, this one human-induced. Money might buy much, but it cannot buy back an extinct species. Ignorance, short-sightedness, power, corruption, and greed prevail over and above the truth: all life is interconnect-ed and humanity is slowly

gnawing the world away while hammering nails, one by one, into our own coffin with each species we exterminate.”

an ocean of sharks. Changing the negative perception that people have of sharks is what I aim to achieve. The video reveals the very thing we promote; sharks are not monster man-eaters. If they were, I would not be here anymore – not whole anyway,” she says.

The campaign was sparked by a 2012 annual budget report by the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Sharks Board. Here, Rochat read that they received R41.3 million (approx. $5 million at the time) from a government grant and a further R19.6 million ($2.4 million) from local municipalities to operate. Her frustration was most of the money was funneled into shark fishing and little to education, awareness or research.

“Ten years ago, when they were researching alternative beach safety devices, they told me insufficient funds as the reason for it having gone nowhere slowly.”

“AfriOceans works tirelessly to save sharks with a budget of less than half of the KZN Sharks Boards’ fuel and oil budget of R2 million ($245,000) for 2012, used no doubt by their boats that set and maintain nets and lines.

“Our government’s priori-ties are horribly flawed. They provide exorbitant amounts of money for killing of marine life, supposedly in order to save a few human lives, but do

Rochat never stops. With 20 years diving some of the world’s best destinations, she has added her photo-graphic wildlife safaris to her mix; to share some of the special places, including Panama, she has been to.

And whatever happened to Maxine the shark? Well, Rochat played an important role in setting her free, after nine years swimming in circles in the aquarium.

“It’s nice to know that as a result of my work the aquarium has introduced a shark re-cycling policy whereby sharks no longer spend their lifetime in a tank but are released and replaced by other sharks,” says Rochat.

A life far from constraint for the Shark Warrior with a friend named Maxine. FW

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SHARKS ARE NOT MONSTER MAN-EATERS. IF THEY WERE, I WOULD NOT BE HERE ANYMORE – NOT WHOLE ANYWAY.”– Lesley Rochat

Rochat paddles out for sharks with Shark Warrior kids

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Fiona Ayerst

Lawyer. Undersea Photographer. Diving Instructor

Ten years ago, Fiona Ayerst gave up the comfortable life of a litigation attorney in

Johannesburg to move to Moss-el Bay, a small harbor town with a population of under 60,000,

I am the only person in my family emotionally connected to water, as far as I can tell,” she says.

Ayerst is in the water a lot more these days. The Scuba in-structor stopped counting her dives after reaching 5,000. She counts the fresh water spring Bassas da India, an exposed atoll between Madagascar and central Mozambique, as the most remote place she has ever dived in and any

to become an award-winning underwater photographer, director of the NGO Sharklife and a representative for SASSI (the South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative). She regularly holds talks on the state

of our oceans and over-fishing; trying to urge people to become more conscious of their seafood choices.

That’s not all; on this day when we meet her, Ayerst had just come back off the peaks of the Himalayas where she had been photographing snow leopards. Happy to be home and relishing the sound of the surf, Ayerst gave a glimpse of life behind the lens beneath the sea.

“I have always been passionate about water and being immersed in it. I feel safe and happy in water. It is my ‘go-to’ place if I am ever stressed,” says Ayerst.

Born in land-locked Nairobi, Ayerst found her way into the Indian Ocean in Mombasa at an early age.

“My parents say I could swim before I could walk. I definitely preferred being in water from a very young age.

What draws you to underwater photography?I have always been fascinated with animals, particularly those of the unknown and mysterious oceans. Oceans are magical and powerful ‘dreamlike’ places where thousands of opportunities exist to interact with and capture beauty with a camera.

What is the current state of our oceans?I am perpetually concerned for the oceans of the world and all of their inhabitants. Most people have concerns around whales and dolphins but very few people know (just by way of example) that if just one sea cucumber is picked up from the sea floor, a myriad of smaller animals living on it die too.

Have you seen a change in underwater life? I have been diving for more than 20 years and I have seen a decline in the numbers of fish and in particular sharks. I have seen turtles becoming increasingly petrified of interactions with divers[Change is] happening much too slowly though. I urge everyone who reads this to pick up as much plastic as you can whenever and where ever you see it – as likely no one else is going to do it.

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I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PASSIONATE ABOUT WATER AND BEING IMMERSED IN IT. I FEEL SAFE AND HAPPY IN WATER. IT IS MY ‘GO-TO’ PLACE IF I AM EVER STRESSED,”

– Fiona Ayerst

disused mine with caves as her scariest.

“It really helped me to have been practicing as a lawyer for about 15 years beforehand. I was financially independent before I became a professional photographer.”

The life of a photographer isn’t always a breeze. Ayerst says with huge changes in the medium of photography over the past five years, maintaining a high standard

for which clients have to pay for photos has become difficult competing with millions of enthusiasts with good cameras.

“I struggle with working out what time in my day is work and what is play. This may sound strange but being a wildlife photographer means that work and play morph into each other effortlessly. It is important to extricate yourself from both successfully and

understand very clearly where one ends and the other begins.”

Ayerst knows the job also requires an open mind, and a rocky knoll for a bed.

“A person has to be flexible and prepared to travel in less than luxurious and sometimes downright dangerous situations.”

A far place to be for Ayerst who gave up the thrill of the corporate jungle. FW

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Alison Kock

It’s the kind of morning that outshines a picture postcard; a pristine sunrise over the Kogel-

berg Mountain Range to gleam golden on a glassy Atlantic Ocean. In the early morning light, Shark Spotters’ Alison Kock and her team of research-ers, Dave van Beuningen and Tamlyn Engelbrecht, face a rare calm day at work.

They are due for an island on False Bay the size of a football field, a 20-minute boat ride from Simon’s Town, 40 kilometers outside of Cape Town. For this crew, the weath-er a mere conversation, what matters is whether the sharks are hungry. The sharp-toothed predators they study can be as contrary as they are deadly.

“I still can’t guarantee we are going to see anything. At this time of year, it’s hard to predict what they will be doing,” says Kock.

We arrive at Seal Island; which has thousands of them. The sharks see the boisterous seals as breakfast. This is why Kock has been coming here for 12 years to tag and research the great white shark, the sleek predator lurking in the deep chilly water off the rocks.

Kock’s obsession with sharks began in the most unlikely of places – in a car wash. At the time, Kock was soaping down cars while studying marine biology at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

“When someone drove in, they would give me their keys, and I would have to make sure there were no valuables in the car. In one of the cars, I opened the boot and there were all these posters of great whites jumping out of the water. I had just finished three years of biology at UCT and

I thought I knew something about marine life.

“When the guy came back to the car I asked him about the posters. And he said it was a friend of his who took the photos. I said no way, I don’t believe you, and these photos are fake. I said ‘I’ll pay for your

The Water Baby Hooked By A Flying Shark

THE BLUE ECONOMY

car wash if you let me speak to this friend’.”

This is how Kock met the photographer Chris Fallows, the owner of a shark cage diving company. His pictures captured the great whites leaping from deep waters at 40 kilometers an hour as they

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attacked pups learning to swim.

“I was totally skeptical. They were saying when we get to the island there might just be a splash. We might see the shark actually breach out of the water. I said ‘please guys you are having me on’. I thought I knew a lot about the ocean. I’ve been a diver in the Cape since I was 17. I was a water baby. Never had I heard of these sharks.”

Kock persuaded Fallows to tag along on a shoot.

“True as Bob. A great white shark flies out of the air and lands back down again. I threw everything I have ever learned about sharks out of the window and said ‘take me on as your intern right now’. I was hooked.”

Kock volunteered to work with Fallows in the job of smashing stereotypes. At the time, Kock was shocked to find there was little research on these underwater predators.

“I realized we just had no clue. There was no research. We didn’t know anything about sharks. We didn’t know how many there were. We didn’t know what parts of the population were there, we didn’t know whether they used other parts of the bay. Nothing. That’s when I went back to do my Honours, my Master’s, and then my PhD,” says Kock.

Their shark behavior research was ground-breaking.

“There was one published article about 20 years ago and then there was this massive gap. Nothing. Then [Fallows] started doing work on the hunting strategies around the island.”

As we speak in a boat 50 meters off the rocks, the ocean is teeming with life. Hundreds

of birds soar and a pod of 500 dolphins shatter the calm sea. The wind changes and the smell of the seals on the island is pungent. Something researchers get used to quite quickly. We pass by two shark diving companies who inform Kock they have seen five great whites this morning.

“White sharks are all about catching what’s abundant and easy. We now have a much greater understanding of that. Now we are starting to look at why they move inshore. We know the why from Seal Island. Sharks are there to predate on juvenile seal pups that are naive and easy to catch. Sharks time their movement to coincide best with catching those pups,” says Kock.

It’s a game of cat and mouse. Kock lowers a sonar receiver into the water to see if sharks that she has tagged are nearby. If there is no response, and they suspect there are other sharks in the bay, they can begin.

A black foam board cut in the shape of a baby seal they call Frank and chum, bait fish, is thrown overboard to help lure the sharks.

“Some days, they go only for Frank. Others, they are more

“Millions of sharks are targeted for their fins, but what most people don’t realize is it is much more than just a fin trade. The shark fishery isn’t a recent phenomenon, and you’ll probably never guess how it started.”

This is the concluding statement made by Dave van Beuningen, research assistant at Shark Spotters, when he looked at the history of shark fisheries; South Africans have been eating it since World War II.

“Many of the troops during the war suffered from severe malnutrition, and sharks, of all creatures, were their saving grace. Shark liver oil is rich in vitamin A, essential for a healthy immune system and good vision. Shark livers are massive organs and can account for up to 20 per cent of the total weight of the shark, making it a good source of this essential nutrient,” says van Beuningen.

The first documented account of a South African shark fishery started with gill nets off KwaZulu-Natal in 1931 with 136 tonnes. By 1940, annual landings grew to over 1,000 tonnes. After World War II, the demand for shark stagnated. It was sold primarily to other African countries as a cheap source of protein, until 1990, when demand surged again with commercial line fishing.

“With declining population of species of our line fisheries, they have moved to the next best thing, which is shark. Shark has moved from being something they didn’t want, to being a targeted species,” says Allison Kock, researcher at Shark Spotters.

“It’s a bit of a Catch 22. My colleagues in fisheries are saying we should put precau-tionary practices for this species

Would you ever eat shark meat? Chances are you already have.

and management says show me the data, but there has been little research,” says Kock.

Van Beuningen’s concern, like Kock, goes further that eating sharks to extinction. Seafood fraud is a massive problem. In 2012, a South African study found that 9% of samples from wholesalers and 31% from retailers were labelled incorrect-ly as a different species.

Currently there is no regulation in South Africa that prevents shark from being sold under different names either. It enables fishers to catch and sell beyond the legal limits by selling shark under thousands of different labels like ‘flake’, ‘white fish’, ‘ocean fillet’, ‘gummy’ or ‘lemon fish’, according to van Beuningen.

“What people find surprising is the meat is exported to Australia and the USA predom-inantly. The biggest market for our shark is Australia and the US, where they serve it in fish and chips,” says Kock.

There are signs of change. South Africa has banned the practice of “finning”, chopping sharks’ fins off and throwing the rest of the shark back into the sea, sometimes still alive.

The country has also established a National Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks. This report identifies problems within the fisheries and suggests solutions to make it more sustainable. The issue is it negates the other impacts affecting sharks, habitat destruction, pollution, perse-cution gill nets and drum lines are all factors which need to be addressed.

So before you dig into you next plate of fish and chips it might be worthwhile to consider what you really are eating.

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Roushana Grey

Seaweed For Lunch?

We stand on the edge of a rock pool at low tide.

The water is crystal-clear, the seagulls are cawing and the seaweed is fresh – the last place you would expect to grab a bite to eat. For Roushana Grey, the coastal forager in a giant floppy hat, a new moon and the low tide means lunch.

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interested in chum. You can never tell. Some are curious and will come to the boat, others aren’t interested. We have also found that sharks that have been tagged come less frequently to boats than those who haven’t. They learn,” says Kock.

Ten minutes later and the first shark drifts in from the depths to take a bite at Frank.

“Male, juvenile, three meters... is it untagged?” shouts Kock to the crew.

Next come identification and action. A clear photo of a dorsal fin needs to be recorded above the surface. Van Beun-ingen also lowers a GoPro, attached to a pole, beneath the water to record its underbelly to help confirm its sex. Only after this, can Kock mount a GPS tag on her dart gun pole.

“Come September, the sharks stop feeding around the island. First, the water temperature changes from winter to summer. It gets from two degrees to a warmer 21 degrees. We thought one of the reasons why [great whites] stop catching seals is the fish become abundant elsewhere. A colleague of mine studied the seal side of the seal and shark relationship. She found that with the winter season, those seals start wising up.”

Since 2004, Kock has built a database of over 400 sharks. Her research has shown that the sharks in False Bay are mostly teenagers – no wonder they are so troublesome.

“We’ve also found once sharks hit that maturity stage where they switch from sub-adult to adult they spend little time coming back here. We think Cape Town is a maturing white shark area, about two per cent of our females are mature and about ten per cent are males.

THE BLUE ECONOMY

into growing; it’s one of the reasons we think the females are coming inshore,” says Kock.

There are still many other mysteries surrounding the great white.

“Sharks are smarter than people assume. They adapt their hunting patterns to their environment. You’ve got some sharks that will come to Seal Island every year, and never go to Gansbaai. You’ve got other sharks that will pop between the two. Even though they are the same size and the same sex they have individual behaviors, which makes our life difficult in finding a pattern,” says Kock.

Great whites are also versatile. They are capable of massive migration and travel from South Africa to Australia.

“We have very strong data to show a relationship between water temperature and white shark presence in False Bay. When the water is 18 degrees and more, we have our peak in white shark

I THREW EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER LEARNED ABOUT SHARKS OUT OF THE WINDOW AND SAID ‘TAKE ME ON AS YOUR INTERN RIGHT NOW’. I WAS HOOKED.”– Alison Kock

“People always have these preconceived ideas that seaweed is slimy and revolting and how can you possibly think of eating it? It’s nice to change their minds a bit,” she says.

This is one reason why the Cape Town-born Grey stands with a group of nursing students in the rock pools of Scarborough beach, 47 kilometers from Cape Town. Grey is here to teach them

about the pantry our ancestors used since the Ice Age.

“It’s no good showing people it in the ocean, you have to cook and eat it for them to feel like they can do it again. Because people are so new to it you have to introduce them with something they are familiar with. Introduce it slowly.”

Today’s menu is signature seaweed.

“We are going to be using the kelp and the seaweed, instead of mussels because of the red tide we are only going to use the kelp, the young fresh ones. Slice them up into strips and make tagliatelle with them.”

Grey is no stranger to foraging. She has been living off the land for 10 years since she moved here with her husband to run the family nursery selling African plants.

“I started learning about fynbos growing around me, specifically indigenous edible plants and their medicinal properties and how one can use them in cooking... A lot of the food that we find in the wild is quite bitter. Our palate has evolved over the years. It’s become sweet, especially with all the sugar we eat. If you had to go out into the wild and collect a whole bunch of things, modern-day man is not necessarily going to like the taste anymore.”

It took a chance meeting with a Japanese forager, traveling the world by bike, for her to catch on to the fruits of the sea. Hiromu Jimbo has cycled 90,000 kilometers since 2009; in 2013 he came across Grey in Scarborough to the south of Cape Town.

“Then Jimbo arrived. We had been foraging for fish,

mussels and maybe some sea lettuce, without being aware of the diverse edible seaweed available. He came down and didn’t know what species was down here, he just knew it was good. He couldn’t understand why no one was down at the shoreline.”

From Jimbo, Grey learned to appreciate seaweed and it’s Umami, what the Japanese define as a pleasant savory taste.

“Food has played a huge part of my life. I do wild food catering and pop up events. I like to include at least one ingredient that is an edible plant or seaweed in my meals.”

With little knowledge to go on, Grey tastes plants with caution. Finding an edible plant has its risks.

The worst thing she has had was a really bad stomachache.

“I like to fact check before I eat anything new. You take it, rub it against your skin, and then wait a few hours. Then you put it on the tip of your tongue and wait a few hours. If everything is fine and you haven’t thrown up or passed out you take a small bite and see how it goes.”

So if you are on the hunt for a new culinary experience maybe you should look at the rocks at low tide. FW

“The estimates have big errors, but as accurately as we can tell, over the last 10 years we have estimated that the population that has visited this site is 700. If you compare this with other whole shark aggregation sites around the world, it’s more than double,” says Kock.

What is interesting about Kock’s research is that females drift closer to the shore and the people swim in it during summer. It goes a long way to keep the Shark Spotters program running since 2005. They operate watch beacons, look out points on the cliffs overlook-ing the beaches of Muisenberg and use a flag system to notify surfers and swimmers if there are sharks in the water.

“Humans might not like the whites, but they love the other marine life. A lot of peo-ple are against lethal methods, 10 years ago, this wouldn’t have been the case. There has been a real change in the way people view sharks.”

In 2015, a record high of 98 people were bitten by sharks and six were killed. In the same year, there were 12 people who died taking selfies. Still, the knock-on effect of a shark attack can be lethal to business. Shark Spotters found that for up to three months, there are fewer people in the water.

“When you are in warmer water you can put that energy

sightings inshore. We think it’s probably more related to the coming to their prey that has narrower temperature tolerances,” says Kock.

Interesting but deadly; Kock says most attacks are over in a minute. If you get to a kill quick enough you can smell it. Watching these sharks in all their power and strategy is one of the wonders of Africa all should see. FW

Markus Burgener, Senior Program Officer at TRAFFIC, has spent 16 years tracking poached abalone on its way to Asia. A former Johannesburg lawyer, he moved to Cape Town to challenge the poachers who he believes are killing the industry and its animals.

“With abalone, the level of offtake in the illegal fishery is massive. What’s coming out of the water legally is less than 5% of what is being removed from the water. The poaching volume is 95% plus... We estimate that the illegal trade runs anywhere between R500 to a R1 billion a year. We don’t know exactly but it’s a fair guess.

“The reality is this illicit business is associated with gangs, organized crime, generating vast profits but at the same time it is contributing to thousands of people’s livelihoods. But the problem is, it’s an unsustainable business model. It could be three years from now or five; business will diminish and ultimately collapse.”

Most poached abalone ends up as dried abalone. The largest market, by far, is in Hong Kong. They say the devil is in the detail and Burgener has plenty to show abalone is on the verge of collapse.

“Fifteen years ago, as a poacher, you could afford to be picky. You would rather in terms of your effort take out the bigger ones. As the resources have been depleted they have had to target the smaller-sized abalone to reach the same volume. We have seen in the data, the number of animals caught has been increasing more than the volumes... In the wild, abalone will take five to seven years to reach sexual maturity, but by that time it would have been picked off the rocks.”

But there is potential to change this bleak outlook. Burgener believes that the turning tide of the Blue Economy is key.

“We need to ensure whatever is taken off African coastal waters is brought in legally. At the moment, most African countries don’t have the fishing vessels and the skills to harvest many of their resources. They have concessions, fishing rights, to other country vessels flagged so that they can come and fish in your waters.”

And the fate of abalone? “It’s proven to be more hardy

resource that scientists predicted. I guess in some ways we are fortunate that it is such a robust resource. There will come a time, it can’t handle the extraction levels.”

Hopefully, a compromise can be found before abalone becomes another name on the ever-growing extinct species list.

Poaching, The Real Big Business In Abalone

TO MAKE YOUR SEA

SNACK:

Always pick off the rocks and as close to the tide line as possible

Sustainability: forage in different locations to allow your meal to grow back

Foraging permits can be bought from a post office

Seaweed season is in spring when there is new growth

Don’t forage near the city, clean water is key

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2016 FORBESWOMANAFRICA | 37

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2016 FORBESWOMANAFRICA | 39 38 | FORBESWOMANAFRICA AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2016

Meaghen McCord

Protector Of The Deep

It’s small enough to fit in your big pocket, but big enough for the job. They call it Baited Remote

Underwater Video (BRUV). In short, it’s a camera tied to a bait ball and thrown into the

sea. With this small, cheap device, Meaghen McCord, founder of South Africa Shark Conservancy (SASC), is showing thousands there is more to the ocean floor than seaweed and sand.

THE BLUE ECONOMY

whale capital of Africa, where thousands of tourists flock to see hundreds of southern right whales in winter.

Despite this interest, McCord, the energetic research-er of the deep, paints a bleak picture of the ocean.

“Blue fin tuna, there is only two per cent of their viable population left on the planet. Big sharks – we’re facing a big level mass extinction event in the next 40 years in the oceans. The problem with that is we don’t know how that is going to affect us. It’s a tipping point and we’re there,” she says.

Danger lurks where you can’t see. McCord is overseeing research into microplastics – that is plastic that has ground away to less than 0.5 of a millimeter. The study, which is still to be completed, compares micro-plastic in beach core samples of blue flag beaches, which is clean beaches, compared to non-blue flag.

“That’s the thing with plas-tic, it never disappears. It just gets smaller and smaller until you can’t see it with the naked eye. But it’s there. Microplastics accumulate micro-toxins. People don’t realize that these are being ingested by mollusks and fish, which in turn you eat and then poisons you. In the United States, they have found microplastics attract and absorb Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichlo-roethane).”

According to the World Health Organization, POPs are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and develop-mental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer.

It started 20 years ago, not far from the crashing waves of the sea. The day farmers from a small seaside town in Africa took a snail-like crustacean, slithering through the swaying kelp forests under the ocean, and tried to farm it on land. They grew this small town idea into a thriving R529 million ($38 million) aquaculture business. This is the story of abalone in Africa, reared on the shores of Hermanus and Gansbaai, 120 kilometers southeast of Cape Town, and ends up on dinner plates in Hong Kong.

“It’s like having cows in a field, but you have to provide them with the air that they breathe. That’s why aquaculture is so much more stressful than normal agriculture.”

So says Louise Vosloo, General Manager of abalone farm Aqunion, who has been a mother to abalone for 15 years as a zoologist.

“I’m not your typical fish aquaculture crazy. I love the production aspect. I love the miracle of science; watching the abalone through the lens of a microscope and seeing the eggs being fertilized. That is what has made me aquaculture crazy.”

The abalone farm Vosloo works at could have come straight out of a scene from a science fiction movie. From within a darkened warehouse, Vosloo takes us into Aqunion’s hatchery where millions of abalone are grown – it looks like Mad Scientist’s clone laboratory.

Hanging on lit racks is where Vosloo’s interest lies, the science. Row upon row of packets filled with abalone larvae are pumped with sea water, on a never-ending drip.

It has to be dark; the abalone are

nocturnal. The larvae grow faster in these conditions than in harsh daylight. They believe keeping the abalone in packets mimics the conditions of the sea, yet in a safer environment. The reason why you would want to ensure they are in pristine condition is that abalone has proven to be a lucrative long-term investment.

“The classic size is 100g and takes three to four years to grow from eggs,” says Vosloo.

The latest data released in the Aquaculture Yearbook 2014 by The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) showed businesses on the sea are on the rise. In 2013, the value of the aquaculture sector, based on sales of products, grew by 38.1% to R696 million ($69 million), abalone accounted for 76% of R529 million ($52 million). It’s a drop in the ocean when compared with South Africa’s gross value of agricultural production which is almost R187 billion ($18.5 billion) in 2013.

There is plenty of room for farms to grow. South Africa accounts for 1% of the 120,000 tonnes of abalone produced in the world a year; of this, Aqunion produces 200 tonnes.

To live, millions of liters of sea water need to be pumped through their tanks every hour. A blocked sump could spell disaster in a matter of 10 minutes.

“We are so dependent on what happens in the sea. You can’t just switch off recirculation. Red tides can affect your hatchery larvae, that’s our little baby pipeline. It’s been associated with fish kills, toxins, mussels. We check the sea water every day.”

Vosloo keeps a detailed Excel spreadsheet on her computer of all the nasty critters she has come across, just in case she comes across them again.

“I think women do quite well in these positions, because we can multitask. We can prioritize and make decisions. Our brains are wired to look after the baby, cook the food, clean the house and look after the husband. They say behind every man is a strong woman. With abalone there is this nurturing component. You are looking after this living organism; it’s not a production line. But, the guys on the farm also refer to [abalone] as their babies,” she says.

Vosloo describes what’s so appealing about eating this crustacean.

“I prefer biltong. Abalone’s got a nice niche taste and I respect why

people love it. It’s a huge culture steeped in tradition. The biggest thing about it is it’s a status symbol. Family members will buy it for one another as a sign of respect.

“Sometimes the government thinks abalone farming could be a solution to the poaching, but this is not subsistence farming, or catching your fish in your backyard to feed your family. It’s got huge cost, with massive risk. If you do one thing wrong, that is it,” says Vosloo.

The small crustacean in the kelp forest is going to become an even bigger money maker. By 2020, South Africa will produce 3,000 tonnes a year, says Vosloo. It seems the dinner plates of Hong Kong can’t get enough.

“Kids can’t get in the ocean. So they can’t really see what is beyond their reaches. If you can’t see something you are less inclined to protect it. Even adults are flabbergasted by what they see. These types of organisms are here right on their doorstep. It looks like a dirty brown sea from above, but under there is so much happening,” says McCord.

McCord’s research facility is a small rock building on the rocks, the former home of the first abalone farm in South Africa in Hermanus, 120 kilometers southeast of Cape Town.

Here, McCord has spent 17 years working on various aspects of shark biology, ecology and management. The Canadi-an-born McCord grew up closer to nature than most having lived in a tree house in Ottawa.

“I think it was a long-lasting deep connection to the natural world. My dad was a hippie and brought me up to be connected,” says McCord.

The first step to becoming founder of the SASC was traveling to South Africa on a whim to study fishery science at Rhodes University in 2003. She fell in love with Africa and never left.

“We founded the SASC in 2007 to study exploited shark species, because there was no one conducting any research at the time, even within the government where coastal management fell into their portfolio, there was very little research being done. It was an area of low economic value compared to high-valued fish species. It was about studying commercially fished sharks,” she says.

The people who come here to these sea-sprayed doors are more concerned with whales. This is the heart of the

For a continent that has been pegged as a frontier Blue Economy, McCord fears sharks won’t survive.

“Historically, we have a long history with the ocean but it’s been mismanaged to the point where most of our line fish have collapsed and declared in a state of emergency. As a result of that and a lack of fish in the ocean, fishermen are having to change their target species to sharks.”

McCord also notes the Blue Economy has potential but is underutilized. Education is key.

From over-fishing to climate change, McCord is concerned any action might be too little too late.

“Sometimes, it feels that what you are doing is like a drop in the ocean, it’s very difficult to feel like you are making a difference. Research is good for the scientists. But, it’s translat-ing the science into meaningful outcomes for communities here who are going to make a difference and drive change.”

It all leads back to the small cottage on the rocks where a researcher uses a camera to change the way people see the ocean floor. FW

‘Not Your Typical Fish Aquaculture Crazy’

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