- The only permit holder in South Africa’s demersal shark longline fishery has been reported breaching permit regulations, raising questions about the sustainability of the fishery.
- The fishery targets critically endangered and endangered shark species with no catch limits in place to prevent overfishing.
- Target species are already depleted, according to scientific assessments, while little is known about bycatch of other protected and endangered species.
Gqeberha, SOUTH AFRICA — On June 17, marine biologist Enrico Gennari and a group of students set out into the water in South Africa’s Mossel Bay. They were planning to use baited remote underwater video cameras to monitor fish populations near the modest port, when they spotted the bright yellow and orange hull of the Zanette, a shark longline vessel.
The Zanette is a special boat: It is the only vessel currently licensed to catch sharks in South African waters, under a permit registered to a Gqeberha-based company, Fisherman Fresh. The Zanette’s permit allows its skipper Marius Verwey to catch skates, rays and five shark species.
Gennari and his colleagues approached within 50 meters (164 feet) of the 12-m (39-ft) shark-fishing vessel; they could immediately see that its crew had failed to properly deploy the mandatory tori lines, which prevent seabirds from getting caught on the hooks set out for sharks. They also watched the crew processing their catch on board. Photographs and drone footage taken by Gennari and a colleague show bins filled with shark heads and fins on the Zanette’s decks.
According to regulations, fishers are required to land sharks complete with their heads and fins to allow inspectors to verify that no protected species have been caught, as well as check that no sharks smaller than 70 centimeters (27.5 inches) — juveniles — or larger than 130 cm (51 in) — to protect larger, breeding-age females — have been taken.
Gennari reported what he had seen to the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE). “What we saw in just 30 minutes is sincerely worrying,” he wrote in an email to the department’s scientists.
The DFFE inspector charged Verwey with landing sharks without heads, which he admitted and paid a penalty of 2,500 rand (around $145). In his report, the inspector wrote: “I wish to conduct further criminal investigations into the wrongful and unlawful conduct of skipper Marius Verwey of the vessel Zanette PEA 319. Nobody had the right to commit this crime.”
Neither Verwey nor Fisherman Fresh responded to requests for comment for this story.
A troubling fishery
The case is the latest incident in what some conservationists say are ongoing problems with regulating South Africa’s shark fishery.
According to the DFFE, the demersal shark longline fishery mainly targets two threatened sharks, the endangered smoothhound (Mustelus mustelus) and the critically endangered soupfin shark (Galeorhinus galeus). With little domestic consumption of shark meat or fins, almost the entire catch of shark meat and fins (1,000 tons per year across all fisheries) is destined for Asia and Latin America, according to statistics from the South African Revenue Service.
Both soupfin and smoothhound sharks are medium-sized demersal species — bottom-dwelling, near-shore — that have a long lifespan and reproduce slowly, which makes them particularly prone to overfishing. Soupfin sharks prey on bony fishes, crustaceans like crabs and shrimp, and cephalopods like squid and are themselves prey to larger sharks, most notably the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias)\.
Smoothhound sharks regulate the seabed ecosystem by foraging on bottom-dwelling organisms. Targeting crustaceans, mollusks and small fish, their hunting behavior helps maintain nitrogen and oxygen levels of the sea. Smoothhound are prey of great hammerhead, dusky (Carcharhinus obscurus) and blacktip sharks (C. limbatus).
In 2019, South Africa’s fisheries department found that populations of smoothhound sharks have declined by 30% since the early 1990s, when 30 permits for commercial shark longline fishing were issued. While the number of vessels licensed to fish for species like smoothhounds, or for pelagic sharks in the open water farther out, was soon reduced to 23 and eventually to six, stocks continued to fall. The DFFE’s 2019 assessment suggested reducing the annual catch of smoothhounds to below 75 metric tons would be necessary to allow the populations to recover.
Soupfin sharks are widely distributed — and historically just as widely targeted by fishers — in all major oceans and the Mediterranean. In South Africa, where fishers have targeted this shark for more than a century, populations are estimated to have decreased by more than 90% over the past three generations, according to IUCN.
Stocks of soupfin sharks in South Africa’s waters have been declining since the 1940s, according to the DFFE. The department estimated annual catches at between 100 tons and 200 tons in 2019, and projected that if it continues to be caught at this rate, the fishery will no longer be commercially viable within 30 years.
Demersal mischief
The department doesn’t set a catch limit for the demersal shark longline fishery (DSL), instead managing the desired annual take by defining a “total allowable effort.” It is not clear how much South Africa’s fisheries department actually knows about how many sharks are caught and killed off the country’s coastline each year.
Critics say there is little actual monitoring of vessels fishing under the DSL permit. In 2019, two members of the public opened a case against a previous permit holder, after observing a longliner called the White Rose catching large numbers of protected hammerhead sharks in the De Hoop Marine Protected Area. The vessel’s owners, Unathi-wena Fishing CC, were convicted of violating environmental and marine protection regulations and fined more than 2 million rand ($117,000) — though half of this was suspended.
Prosecution and sentencing were only completed in November 2024. Meanwhile, other individuals reported the White Rose continued to fish in De Hoop and other MPAs until its permit expired in 2021. Those allegations of further violations are corroborated by vessel tracking data from Global Fishing Watch.
GFW data suggest that the Zanette, too, has been fishing inside protected areas. The fisheries watchdog’s data show 17 “fishing activities” for Verwey’s boat in the Garden Route National Park’s marine section in 2024 and 2025, and a further six such records in two other MPAs.
Analyzing one data track from 2024, GFW analyst Dhiya Sathananthan explained to Mongabay that back-and-forth movements are one obvious indicator of fishing. “A vessel is not going to waste fuel going in a triangle, unless there is a reason. A zigzag track also doesn’t indicate they are transiting.”
Sharks under pressure
Shark species around the world are under pressure from fishing. A group of scientists analyzed the Living Planet and the Red List indices, which track global population changes and changes in the extinction status of species, respectively, and correlated a 71% decline in oceanic shark and ray populations since 1970 to an 18-fold increase in fishing pressure according to global catch data by the FAO. For two-thirds of all threatened shark species, overfishing as target and bycatch is the sole threat to their populations.
In South Africa, the demersal longline fishery is the only one targeting sharks, but the DFFE has identified bycatch — sharks caught incidentally by inshore trawlers and pelagic longline boats targeting other species.
The department also acknowledges that because most of this bycatch is discarded at sea by fishers without being recorded, its data for shark mortality is incomplete. In its most recently published assessment, the department conceded that the ecological impact “could be high.”
Responding to their global decline, several parties, including Brazil, the EU, and Senegal, have proposed that smoothhound and soupfin sharks be added to the CITES Appendix II. This listing would bar international trade in either species unless a government authority can demonstrate a local fishery would cause no harm.
South Africa’s national action plan for sharks states that no Appendix II-listed species may be landed by the shark fishery. The DFFE did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment on whether it is going to submit a reservation against the proposal or not.
In 2020, the ministry set up a panel to review the management of South Africa’s shark species in response to a petition by a public group called “Save Our Sharks.” The campaign, supported by members of the public and the Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism Association in Gqeberha, resulted in a revision and tightening of the shark fishery’s permit conditions, including the introduction of size limits, the prohibition of fishing specific species such as sevengill, hammerhead, mako blue and oceanic whitetip sharks (C. longimanus); as well as new restrictions on gear like stainless steel hooks. Regulations to reduce shark bycatch in other fisheries were also strengthened.
When the DFFE allocated permits in 2021, the number of DSL licenses was reduced from six to four. The DFFE told Mongabay that because existing permit holders either didn’t fish for sharks — or, like the White Rose, breached the conditions of the permit — only one permit was issued.
The number of available permits was reduced in line with a preliminary 2021 social and economic impact assessment, which noted that both target species were depleted, but in an email DFFE scientist Charlene da Silva told Mongabay that a more complete assessment of the fishery completed in 2024 showed that fishing levels for the DSL fishery’s two main target species are currently sustainable: “Smoothhound sustainable; soupfin overexploited but not currently overfished.”
The 2024 assessment is not publicly available, but it is referred to in a 2025 document, “Status of South African marine fishery resources,”which says that while soupfin stocks remains overexploited — fishing of this species since the 1920s has reduced the population’s biomass by 87% — it is “currently not subject to overfishing” and that smoothhound is caught at sustainable levels. The status report acknowledges that soupfin stocks are heavily depleted and says fishing mortality — catch and bycatch — for this species should urgently be restricted to below 100 tons/year.
But Gennari said the DFFE’s actions are inconsistent with even its own scientific analysis and policy. As an example, he pointed to what he and his students witnessed in Mossel Bay in June reveals about the effectiveness of the DSL permit requirement for monitoring. “The event clearly shows that those people avoid the slot limits and the cameras and are not checked for enforcement otherwise they would have seen this happening,” he told Mongabay.
Enforcement challenges
Thobile Molobi, a spokesperson for the DFFE, acknowledged that the department’s ability to enforce regulations to protect sharks could be strengthened. “Enforcement is complex due to the wide operating range of a very small fleet that catch demersal sharks as by-catch as a result of the difficulty associated with accurately identifying multiple shark species and limited enforcement resources.”
Molobi told Mongabay that even though the Zanette’s shark-fishing permit requires the implementation of an in-person observer program to monitor of on-board handling of fish, the department has no way to do this. An electronic monitoring system, developed in collaboration with the conservation NGO WILDTRUST, is currently being tested, da Silva said.
When da Silva presented a preliminary report on the EMS at the Southern African Shark and Ray Symposium in 2024, the images generated only allowed the scientists to distinguish rays from sharks and other fish, but not to identify which species had been caught, or their sizes.
For Gennari, what he and his students witnessed the Zanette doing in June raises serious questions. “If this vessel was caught by accident cutting heads, tails and wings, catching prohibited species, what is the likelihood of this vessel regularly performing such infringements?”
Chris Fallows, a naturalist and photographer who used to run a white shark cage diving company and has been taking pictures of the species off this same coast for almost three decades, told Mongabay he has often documented violations in the shark fishery. “I’ve personally seen [a former DSL vessel] catching huge amounts of hammerheads, which were supposedly, according to our government, not being caught.”
He said the sanctioning of the White Rose hasn’t changed much, as he still sees it fishing on the very edge of the MPA. “Business carries on just as before,” said Fallows, adding that the fishery doesn’t even contribute to the South African economy. According to him, the fishery employs a maximum of 50 people, with no contribution to food security as most meat is exported. The DFFE did not share figures on the economic value of the shark fishery.
For Fallows, however, jobs or revenue from the shark fishery simply doesn’t match the potential for ecological harm. “Sharks live to 40-50 years. They take a huge amount of time to become sexually reproductive and they produce relatively few young at a time. They’re not built for commercial exploitation.”
Banner image: The shark longliner Zanette at sea, blue bins containing shark heads and fins on the port side. Image courtesy of Enrico Gennari.
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