INTRODUCTION

South Africa's natural resources in the marine environment (the 'Maritime Connection') can be divided into non-living, non-renewable resources, such as minerals, natural gas and oil reserves, and renewable, living marine resources, i.e. those that can be harvested and utilised in a sustainable manner. This article is confined to the latter group.

Where do these renewable, living marine resources occur?

South Africa has a very long coastline of approximately 3 000 kilometres. Most of these resources are found from close inshore to the edge of the continental shelf, which is very narrow in certain areas, such as off the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, and very broad, such as on the Agulhas Bank. However, South Africa's legal jurisdiction extends to the limits of the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which generally reaches much farther than the outer limits of the continental shelf. The country's EEZ also includes the waters surrounding South African territory far from the mainland, such as Prince Edward and Marion Islands.

South Africa has a well-developed fishing industry based upon renewable, living marine resources. Several fisheries can trace their origin back to the nineteenth century. Immigrants (mainly from Europe) and some local entrepreneurs realised that the highly productive waters, particularly off the west coast of the subcontinent, were abounding with resources suitable for direct and indirect human consumption.

Several distinct kinds of industrial fisheries have evolved:

those using purse-seine nets to catch small shoaling fish (pilchards and anchovies) near the surface of the sea;



those deploying mid-water trawls to catch aggregations of larger fish (horse mackerels) at greater depths;



those that use bottom trawls to catch species such as Cape hakes, kingklip and soles near the sea bed; and



also fisheries for rock-lobsters, abalone, squid and a host of line fish species.

In the past, South African fish catches have placed the country as high as fifteenth on the world's list of catching nations. Nowadays, its position is generally in the lower thirties. The total annual catch fluctuates depending on the quantum of the pelagic harvest, mainly anchovies for reduction to fish meal. In terms of the size of its total catch, South Africa can be classified as a middle order fishing nation, with a total landed value of more than US $300 million per year and employing some 25 000 people. Even in years of better fish catches, the contribution of fisheries to South Africa's Gross Domestic Product never exceeded two per cent. The current estimate (for 1996) is at approximately 0,5 per cent.

THE MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES

Marine science in South Africa is more than hundred years old, the first government marine biologist having been appointed in 1896. Marine science has made steady progress throughout this century, but as in the rest of the world, the past few decades have particularly witnessed exponential growth in the understanding of marine systems. In South Africa, this took place during a time of increasing political isolation from the rest of the world. Therefore, it is perhaps surprising that the quality of marine research in the subcontinent remained at such a high level. One of the reasons for such an achievement undoubtedly lies in the increasing trend towards co-operative research between the major marine research establishments in the country. Museums, universities and state departments, after many years of polarised initiative, realised the need for a more co-ordinated approach to marine research. Successful programmes, such as the Benguela Ecology Programme, have addressed this need. This programme serves as an example of how internationally isolated research teams can keep abreast of cutting-edge marine science by pooling their competent research resources, including funding and work force.

Responsibility for the management of South Africa's renewable living marine resources lies with Sea Fisheries, a Chief Directorate of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. Sea Fisheries is divided into three main functional components: Marine Control, General Administration and Research. The focus in this article is mainly on the research function. The role of advising on the management and sustainable use of the living resources and ecosystems of the marine environment, based upon sound scientific research, rests largely with the Sea Fisheries Research Institute. The institute, based in Cape Town, undertakes biological research necessary for resource analysis and provides biological inputs and advice required for management. This includes both commercially and recreationally exploited resources, such as rock lobster, abalone, seaweed and a host of pelagic, demersal and line fish species. Research is mainly confined to studies on growth rates, the structure of population size and age, fecundity, feeding, distribution and migration. The institute also designs and conducts hydro-acoustic and trawling surveys to assess the status of harvested resources. Resource models are also analysed and their inherent assumptions are tested. Considerable effort is devoted to improve current and developing new surveying and assessment methodologies. The above are undertaken in order to provide the quantitative support and advice required to manage the country's resources on a sustainable basis in the long term.

The Institute also monitors and conducts research into South Africa's marine fisheries environment, and provides the environmental inputs and advice required for resource and ecosystem management in a diagnostic and prognostic manner. Research fields include physical and chemical oceanography, biological oceanography and pollution.

Lastly, research is also focused on the ecosystem/community level to investigate and monitor system variability, and to provide advice on ecosystem conservation. Research thus focuses on the interaction between populations, and between these populations and the environment, such as environmental influences on the survival of fish larvae, the effect of climate changes on fish distribution, and predator-prey interactions.

The Institute's new research aquarium, due to be operational soon, will allow researchers to engage in a variety of experimental work, using facilities that include holding tanks, culture laboratories and temperature-controlled rooms. Although the aquarium will be operated by the Institute, scientists from universities and private enterprise, such as mariculture concerns, as well as visiting foreign scientists, will be encouraged to make use of the facilities in the interest of furthering the aims of marine science and fostering co-operation with other institutions.

THE MAIN FISHERIES AND MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Demersal fishery for species living near the sea bed

South Africa's demersal, or bottom trawl fishery, is based on the Cape hakes, which together contribute about seventy per cent of the annual catch by the demersal sector. Other species targeted are Agulhas sole, for which a small directed fishery exists on the South Coast, kingklip, and horse mackerel, for which a small directed midwater trawl fishery also exists besides its presence as a by-catch in the hake and sole fisheries.

Hake are managed according to a conservative strategy designed to improve catch rates following their drastic decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s because of foreign and local escalation of effort. The fishery is mainly conducted by large companies with heavy overheads in plants and trawlers. However, in the recent past, small incremental increases in the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) have been granted to a few smaller entities in an attempt to spread the benefit from the resource more widely. As there is surplus effort for the current TAC and because there is a surfeit of trawlers world-wide looking for grounds on which to operate, there has been no problem in finding means of catching the allocated additional quotas.

Recently, however, efforts have been made by local fishing entrepreneurs in other fishery sectors to secure a slice of this lucrative resource for themselves. Long-lining is the proposed means of capture and this has the potential to provide the small scale fishers with a living for themselves and several co-workers. Scientists, fishers, fisheries managers and politicians have designed a scientific experiment to determine what effect, if any, a modest rate of long-lining would have on the hake resource. A socio-economic investigation of the real benefits that could accrue is simultaneously being carried out. Pressure to expand the scientific experiment into a fully fledged fishery is intense, a step from which, however, it later could prove impossible to withdraw. Nevertheless, scientists are steadfast in their resolve to determine the likely effect of long-lining on the two-species stock before a final decision is made. Therefore, the pressures being brought to bear on this fishery to change have both social and economic consequences. The current stakeholders emphasise that they have borne the 'ups' and 'downs' of the resource while providing employment and, sometimes, the major part of the economic infrastructure of some coastal towns. There is clearly a need for socio-economic information, but this needs to be as rigorous as the natural scientific input currently used to manage the resource.

Pelagic fishery for surface shoaling species

South Africa's pelagic fishery has depended on anchovy since the stocks of pilchard declined significantly in the 1960s. Anchovy, being a short-lived species prone to massive swings in recruitment, is managed to yield the maximum to the fishery, while risk and fluctuations are reduced to an appropriate level. The management strategy for pilchard attempts to rebuild the resource to former higher levels of biomass by limiting the catch to a level that, during the late 1980s, has allowed some recovery in annual biomass.

An operational management procedure, building on that first produced for anchovy, has been designed recently for this multi-species fishery in consultation with the main participants in the fishery. However, most discussions have been held with senior management of the five main companies involved in the fishery and their views may not be consistent with those of the fisherfolk they employ, or of the several independent boat-owners whose catches are processed at the five companies' processing plants. Further and wider discussions on the optimal management procedure are required. Use of this operational management procedure has also been bedevilled in its first year by the fact that anchovy recruitment has been the lowest on record and that large by-catches of juvenile pilchard have been taken.

Poor anchovy recruitment and consequent reduction in catches have had the effect of lowering the country's production of fish meal and also of causing economic hardship for the fishers who have little else to turn to in adversity. Therefore, the pelagic fishery has been faced with social and economic pressures that have been virtually impossible to overlook. The outcome, of course, has been greater pressure on the managers to see beyond biological expediency for the resource and, in the short term at least, to accept a greater risk of stock collapse of the anchovy and of biomass reduction for the pilchard just to allow the fishery to continue.

Despite an awareness of the undesirable medium term effects of allowing large by-catches of juvenile pilchard, the industry, driven by the short term need to obtain socio-economically acceptable catches of anchovy, has put pressure on decision-makers for higher and higher by-catch allowances. Juvenile pilchards are not suitable for canning, but larger ones do (2 years of age and older, i.e. adults). Canning is a labour-intensive industry, therefore enhancing employment prospects. Studies have shown that 1 ton of juvenile pilchard taken for the reduction fishery for fish meal would yield up to 3 tons of fish suitable for canning two years later.

Decision-makers have until now been forced to try and combine the results of rigorous scientific assessment with unquantifiable statements about socio-economic needs usually made only in times of reducing stock size. Clearly, this is an impossible position. Some light at the end of the tunnel for this fishery is the third main species available, round herring, the distribution of which is widespread and for which the total biomass, deduced by acoustics, is roughly a million tons. To date, however, this offshore species that shoals deeper than the other two, has proved to be largely out of the range of the purse-seiners operating in the pelagic fishery and catches are infrequent and highly variable.

Rock Lobster Fisheries

There are two species of rock lobster (actually spiny lobster) harvested by South African fishers. The south coast rock lobster is a deep-water species caught by large freezer vessels deploying long lines of traps. The west coast rock lobster is an inshore species caught commercially by small vessels deploying trap and hoop nets, and recreationally by divers.

The south coast rock lobster has been exploited by large fishing enterprises since its discovery as a commercial resource in the early 1970s and, for reasons of apparent stability in catch rates and size structure, has been granted a stable TAC of just 450 tons for the past ten years. However, recent mathematical modelling showed that the status of the resource may not be so optimistic and led to calls for a stepwise decrease in the TAC to more appropriate levels. However, scientists contracted by the industry dispute aspects of this study.

The situation in the west coast rock lobster fishery is even more serious. This species is easily available to the man-in-the-street and, because of its economic value, recreational, quasi-recreational (both determined by random surveys of licenses) and poached harvests (by allegation) have rocketed in recent years. Concomitant with these catches, has been a drastic decline in the average somatic growth rate of the stock (for reasons that can only be speculated upon) and a reduction in minimum size, TAC and catch (the former was stable for decades and the last two for several years). Both these reductions have been based on assessments and proposals by scientists contracted by the industry, but working in collaboration with state scientists. The two sides of the scientific debate (state and industry) are not close together in their analyses, but they both agree that, unless the growth rate improves dramatically in the next year or so (and after several years of poor growth, there is little sign that it will), the resource will most definitely be in trouble. At the same time, the commercial fishers themselves have traditionally been paid very little for their catches of this extremely valuable commodity, and social pressures to improve their situation are heightening rapidly, putting the industry (and the state) under additional pressure.

As a resource inherently available for the disadvantaged and generally poor fishing communities of the west coast of South Africa, the rock lobster could have proved to be one of the salvations for the area's economy. It would clearly be to everyone's advantage if the growth rate were to improve, thus saving the west coast rock lobster from possible commercial extinction. Control over the recreational and illegal harvest is poor, and made worse by the length and sometimes inaccessibility of the coastline. In summary, there is again great pressure to allow short term political and economic gain from the resource at the expense of long term stability. In the light of the status of the stock and the poor growth rate, such action would be extremely unwise in the long term.

Abalone Fishery

Abalone or perlemoen is another species of very high economic value and one that is easily accessible to the public. While it is a relatively minor component of the South African fishery, it is regionally very important, providing substantial social and economic input in the South Western Cape. Easy availability of the resource, which occurs in the subtidal area, coupled with a relatively high value, makes this an attractive option for small-scale operators. It is a stock that has yielded a stable annual catch for a number of years. Recently, however, concomitant with the general worsening of the South African economy, there has been an escalation in the known recreational harvest and also in the extent of poaching. There is also enormous pressure to increase access to the resource and this has led to demonstrations and street blockades in the abalone fishing areas by those demanding access. The problem is exacerbated by the already extensive poaching, some of which is believed to be linked to drug smuggling, while other poachers claim a right of access, and state that they have been forced into poaching by an unjust system of access.

Abalone are known world-wide to be notoriously difficult to assess and manage scientifically. Currently, the stock is managed by attempting to keep the catch-per-unit-effort constant, but a size-structured approach to manage-ment is nearly complete. The status of this resource is really not clear. While there is variability from site to site, there have been rising catch rates in the abalone fishery, in general for several years. However, there is some debate whether these catch rates represent real trends in the abundance of the resource, an aggregating behaviour of the species in response to exploitation, or are due to changes in fishing behaviour by the commercial fleet. This uncertainty, coupled with escalating concern about the level of poaching on abalone, substantially hinder attempts to manage the fishery with an optimal yield.

Line fishery

The so-called line fishery of South Africa is divided into many different components, some of which have overlapping entrepreneurs, i.e. a fisher in one component may seasonally use a permit in another component. The three main components are the jig-fishery for squid, the line fishery for tuna species, and the general recreational and commercial line fishery for a variety of line-caught species, including snoek and cob.

The squid fishery is conducted seasonally inshore along South Africa's south coast. Squid fishing can be lucrative, and many south coast communities do well from the resource. The number of licensed participants is limited and there is a closed season when spawning is at its peak. The length of the closed season is decided annually from research survey results and other information, correlated with the current year's squid abundance on the fishing grounds. The industry co-operates to enforce the regulations. A rigorous form of stock assessment is being developed.

The tuna fishery (which is also seasonal) is subject to regulations set by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. Catch rates have declined substantially, and the tuna fishers are among the most vociferous of those calling for entry into other fisheries (particularly the long-line fishery for hake). Pressure for new entrants to the tuna industry is not great, largely because the seasonality and the low catch rates make it unattractive to prospective new participants.

The line fishery, in its manifold forms, is severely depressed after decades of over-exploitation. However, snoek, which has shown no measurable decline in abundance over the past eighty years, is the exception among species highly desired by recreational, semi-commercial and commercial fishers.

There is ongoing conflict among the three sectors of the line fishery. Decision-makers have the unenviable task of trying to make a shrinking resource meet everyone's needs. Research and monitoring are massive tasks and funding limitations mean that not all research needs can be met. Many local communities depend heavily on one or other component of the line fishery. There is thus always socio-economic pressure on the decision-makers to give in to local demands in isolation from similar demands made by other groups. The line fishery also plays a large part in the development of tourism (mainly from the subcontinent) and its associated infrastructure along the coast.

Managing the South African line-fisheries therefore represents one of the biggest headaches for the country's fishing authorities. Funding limitations, ongoing representations for special dispensations from many communities and user groups, and the lack of a rigorous socio-economic perspective of the needs from the resource, contribute to make this fishery a focus point for improving the link between fisheries science and management in the fullest sense of the word.

Other Fisheries

There are, of course, many other fisheries carried out in South Africa, but in this section only coastal collecting will be mentioned. Many areas of the long coastline of South Africa have been subjected to subsistence collection for many years. The artisanal nature of such activities, including fish trapping in isolated communities, means that the resources have to be carefully nurtured if optimal benefits are required. Often, shorelines are almost totally denuded of marine life before collecting ceases or moves to another area. It is simply part of the culture of the indigenous coastal collectors to take advantage of available marine life to exist, and no amount of scientific endeavour is going to change that culture after hundreds of years. Therefore, science is rising to the challenge by investigating the most appropriate methods of sustaining the yields, for instance by means of establishing reserves and rotating collection sites.

Mariculture is one way of improving the yields of these coastal resources, but South Africa has a dearth of coastal embayments suitable for such activities. The few that are available are already heavily utilised in the culture of oysters and mussels. Those bays may well be at or above their carrying capacity for mariculture activities, and elucidation of that level and of the extent of organic loading of the bays are currently under investigation.

DISCUSSION

The above brief overview of South Africa's renewable living marine resources, the current management practices in the South African fishing industry, and of some of the scientific inputs that have been made show a well-developed fishing industry and a reasonable level of scientific advice used to manage it. 'Well-developed' means developed to yield optimally under policies aimed at ensuring long term sustainable utilisation.

South Africa has undergone significant political changes. The Government intends wiping out all those legacies of the past that led to differential opportunities for different groups. In doing so, and to fulfil the goals of the Reconstruction and Development Programme, fisheries will have to play their role.

Decision-makers urgently need to decide whether to yield to the expectations of the fisheries and opt for short term maximisation of return, or whether to look towards long term stability and growth. In no fishery is this question more pressing than in that for the Cape hakes. Expectations generated from promises, are that the conservative management strategy applied to hake can be lifted. The established demersal fishing industry favours the status quo or something similar, but public opinion seems against it. Fortunately for the established industry, trawling operations require an expensive infrastructure, but long-lining does not. Therefore, pressure is being applied to allow more use of the long-lining technique for landing hake. Scientists, faced with knowledge that long-lining will add pressure to the hake stock at the large, mature fish size, are requesting caution, while the effect of long-lining is investigated. Whether their pleas will be heard, is questionable.

Government scientists are seen in some quarters as an extension of the old regime in South Africa. Despite claims that they have always been apolitical and that their advice and functions have been and are at the scientific level and not at the level of allocation of rights and quotas, their advice is still seen by some as biased. There are two means of overcoming this bias and both have been tried in other parts of the world. The first is to bring in international scientific advisors from countries favouring improved ties with South Africa. To date, this has not happened to any significant extent, and local scientists prefer to think that it is because marine science in South Africa is recognised by all parties to be of a high international standard. Management could benefit, particularly on politically controversial issues, from input by scientists accepted by all sides as being totally objective, provided they stay long enough to gain an understanding of the methods of scientific endeavour employed in South Africa. In other words, a month's visit from an international advisor, no matter how competent the person, is unlikely to provide meaningful assistance to the decision-maker.

Another means of gleaning independent advice is by contracting local scientists familiar enough with the system to make their own assessment of the status of the stocks. To date, no scientists from the formerly disadvantaged groups have come forward, and the only independent scientists available are consultants well known to and trained with the government scientists. Those consultants have been contracted by industry and not by the State, which in effect means that they are biased to industry and therefore are also not totally objective. There is merit in both these forms of outside evaluation of scientific advice, as it yields an excellent form of peer review. The problem is, however, that more time is usually spent on preparing for 'confrontations' than on the science that should be the end result. Nevertheless, it is supported in principle. Perhaps the ideal situation would be one in which opposing user groups contract their own human and natural scientists to promote their interests, and state scientists can fulfil the role of objective mediators.

Progress has been made in bringing social and economic considerations into management procedures for some fisheries. The best example is that for the pelagic fishery, where constraints, specifically minimum and maximum annual TACs and limits on the percentage change allowed in TACs from year to year, have been incorporated to reduce interannual variability, for purely social and economic reasons.

The approach taken with the pelagic fishery in incorporating social, economic and resource-orientated goals into the management procedure, has been to make use of stochastic operating models of the fishery. These models allow examination of the effect of different procedures on the risk to the stock, where risk is usually defined as the probability of the spawning stock falling below some threshold. With valid insights into the social and economic trade-offs of different options, this approach allows explicit consideration of the risks and rewards of different procedures, and facilitates multi-objective decision-making by the various stakeholders. From the perspective of the fisheries scientists, the greatest problem is probably the difficulty associated with defining an appropriate level of risk.

Further work in this fishery is required and the needs are even more urgent in fisheries, such as those for the Cape hakes and west coast rock lobster, where substantial changes in harvesting practice and the structure of the fisheries are being debated. The goals in such restructuring are essentially more equitable distribution of resources and increasing the benefits obtained from them for South African society as a whole. Rigorous social, economic and fishery research is required to establish how best to achieve these ends and hence to avoid costly mistakes.

One of the main problems hindering the advancement of marine scientific research in South Africa is that of a shrinking funding base. South Africa, until recently, has been cushioned against this, because the fishing industry pays levies into a research fund on the basis of catches made. The amount of the levy is agreed to annually. The need for a meaningful reconstruction and development programme has, however, caused most government departments to share consecutive 'across the board' cuts in budgets.

Despite the small size of the marine science community in South Africa, the need for modern, properly equipped research ships has always been recognised. Research ships are complex and sophisticated platforms from which marine scientists conduct their field work. They operate in a restricted environment, being totally dependent on the research ship to provide them with a means of accessing their study area – the open sea. A major consequence of the diminishing budget, is the inevitable declining standard of maintenance to South Africa's research ships and the inability to man the ships with appropriate staff. The shrinking funding base has had similar negative consequences for the country's marine patrol vessels, and consequently for its ability to patrol the vast exclusive economic zone and effectively control the exploitation of its living marine resources.

The result of the shrinking allocation for marine research has been increased pressure on the research fund and a reassessment of priorities. Such action does not just affect the government's scientists; many independent contract researchers are compensated out of the research fund. At the end of the day, the marine scientific research community is being stretched to the limit and the quality of the advice being given on even the most pressing front is likely to drop. The answer is clearly even greater rationalisation of marine scientific resources. Whether this is to the long term benefit of the country is debatable.

At the end of last year, South African marine science celebrated its centenary, although several of the commercial fisheries have not been in existence for nearly that long. The slow development of the fisheries, much of it prompted by investment from Europe, allied to the traditional South African preference for meat over fish, allowed the timely and orderly institution of appropriate technical control measures to sustain the large scale fisheries at least until the late 1950s. It is really only since then, when entrepreneurs found a willing market for their South African product overseas and later when the distant-water trawl fleets of other countries discovered the rich hake resource of Southern Africa, that the spectre of over-exploitation started to raise its head.

Clearly, large amounts of money were then earned by the privileged few, but those willing fishers who caught the fish also made a good living and kept their families healthy and fed on the seemingly infinite bounty from the sea. Now, South African scientists have started to fight a rearguard action against stock collapse of some resources; indeed they have achieved some notable success. However, it is absolutely crucial that their inherently cautious utterings are listened to more than ever before, if the populations along the coast are to realise their hopes for self-sustainability from their adjacent living marine resources. Technical measures alone cannot protect the South African fisheries any longer. Everyone involved in the formulation of the new fishing policy and each human being along the coast, as well as the commercial fishing companies and decision-makers currently involved, must buy into the principle of sustainable utilisation, and pay it more than lip-service, if the future of South Africa's fish stocks is to be assured.

The South African fishing sector is facing a massive re-appraisal that will undoubtedly have extensive implications for all participants and possibly for the resources themselves. Many of the more pressing issues are socio-political, but all developments will be constrained by the nature, distribution and productivity of the resources. Providing information on these constraints and ensuring that it is comprehended and included in deliberations and final policy, are the critical tasks facing local fisheries scientists. Achieving these tasks will require substantial adjustment by scientists to new circumstances and pressures. Among the most important adjustments are

an appreciation of the implications of the new regional emphasis in South African politics for fisheries management and for approaches to assessment and utilisation of the resources;



facilitating the development of the capacity and opportunities for greater consideration of social and economic issues in development of harvesting strategies and management procedures;



a willingness to encourage further progress towards consultation and joint decision-making in co-management, with all interest groups; and



developing the capacity to assess and manage subsistence utilisation of resources.

The above will be facilitated by the development of an unambiguous fisheries policy appropriate to the short and long term needs of the country.

CONCLUSIONS

South Africa's Sea Fishery Act (1988) has, in effect, a twofold aim: to protect the ecosystem and to make optimal use of the living marine resources. To achieve these aims scientifically, while faced with a shrinking funding base, is becoming increasingly difficult. The levy, and with it the research fund, could disappear altogether if the resources are re-allocated. With social pressures and economic needs becoming increasingly relevant, one could predict that the biological needs of South Africa's living marine resources may have to take a back seat while the expectations are being met.

South Africa is fortunate to have been able to learn from many countries with older fisheries. World-wide, fisheries managers are faced by the problems of fleet over-capacity, over-investment and excessive labour in the fishing sector. Valuable fish resources are declining everywhere because of overfishing as larger, decreasingly cost-effective fleets are competing to catch the dwindling fish resources. Replenishing stocks, and limiting fleets and access should be key priorities. Economic and social realities, however, feed the crisis. Amid the recent recession, industrial countries have been politically and economically unwilling to enact painful cutbacks in fleet-size. In many developing countries, population growth in excess of economic growth, makes it difficult for governments to restrict artisanal fishers.

However, the insights gained from rigorous social and economic research, coupled with an ongoing determination to provide the best possible advice on the status and potential of the marine resources, will hopefully provide a sound base for decisions about the future of marine research in this country. At worst, this will mean that short term benefits are selected in full knowledge of the longer term implications. At best, it will encourage the selection of procedures that allow progress towards social and economic growth and development in the short term without foreclosing on long term options for the country's renewable living marine resources.

ENDNOTES

Edited version of a paper read at the Utility of Naval Power Conference, organised by the Institute for Security Studies, in conjunction with the South African Navy and the Hanns Seidel Foundation, Cape Town, 17 October 1996.