South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association

Home
South Africa
Cape Town
South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association

SADSTIA is an association of South African trawler owners and operators.

It is a recognised industrial body that interacts with government, non-governmental organisations and other interested parties for the benefit of the South African deep-sea trawling industry. SADSTIA and its affiliates represent all right-holders in the deep-sea trawling industry, accounting for 100% of the hake landed by this fishery. The Association is governed by its members and an executive co

mmittee is responsible for its management. The chairman and/or deputy chairman and an executive secretary take care of the day-to-day management of the association.

26/08/2026

MSC certification is easy to picture as a stamp you earn once and keep. It is not.

Every five years, South Africa's hake trawl fishery is re-assessed against one of the toughest standards in world fishing. Independent auditors check three things: whether enough fish are left in the ocean, what the fishing does to everything around it, and whether the whole operation is well run.

Behind that are real measures. Science-based quotas. Trawling kept to a ring-fenced area covering about 4.4 percent of South Africa's waters. An observer programme, now in its twenty-first year, recording interactions with vulnerable species and seabed habitats.

Held since 2004, and re-earned ever since.

➡️ https://sadstia.co.za/good-news-for-fish-lovers-sa-hake-keeps-its-ecolabel/

21/08/2026

Every five years, the South African trawl fishery for hake goes back under review.

Independent MSC assessors work through the stock science, the fishery's environmental impact and the government management measures behind it, line by line. They look for gaps rather than reasons to pass.

The fishery has now come through its fifth full re-assessment and kept its MSC certification, first earned in 2004 and renewed in 2009, 2015 and 2021. That is more than twenty years of holding a standard that has to be re-earned every time.

The record holds not because the work is easy, but because each new condition gets met as it arrives. That is what sustainable management looks like from the inside.

➡️ Follow along for more on the certification at https://sadstia.co.za/the-msc-certification/

13/08/2026

POV: You are on the deck of the Santo do Mar, and the swell ahead is taller than the vessel.

This is Skipper Jerome Koopman's own footage, filmed as the trawler pushes through a heavy sea. No commentary. Just a few seconds of what it feels like to be out there.

It is the part of this fishery the numbers never show. Behind the quotas and the certification are real crews, heading into conditions most of us will never see, to bring back one of the country's most important sources of protein.

The science matters. So do the people who work these waters.

➡️ See more from the fishery at https://sadstia.co.za/publications-and-media/annual-reviews/

12/08/2026

Here is a piece of South African fisheries history worth knowing.

In 1999, scientists Manuel Barange and José de Oliveira asked whether a cheaper system could replace the research surveys for anchovy and sardine. They found that it could not.

With both surveys running, the anchovy fishery could sustain around 230 000 tons a year. With none, that dropped to 168 000 tons, a loss of more than a quarter of the catch. The surveys cost about R1.8 million a year to run, and returned more than R130 million a year in value to the industry.

Hake works differently to anchovy, so those exact figures do not transfer. The lesson does. A small, steady investment in science protects a far larger return.

➡️ Explore the numbers behind the fishery at https://sadstia.co.za/publications-and-media/annual-reviews/

09/08/2026

Picture a fishing industry and you probably picture a man on a heaving deck. That is only part of the story.

Behind South Africa's hake fishery are thousands of women. They run the processing lines that turn the catch into food on shelves, they work in science and management that keep the fishery sustainable, and they hold senior roles across the industry. Of the roughly 12 400 jobs the sector supports, a great many are held by women.

On National Women's Day, they are worth celebrating. A fishery is far more than boats and open water. It is the people, many of them women, who keep the whole industry moving.

➡️ Meet more of the people behind the fishery at https://sadstia.co.za/publications-and-media/annual-reviews/

05/08/2026

Twice a year, a research vessel leaves port to count fish that no one has caught yet.

That is what a fishery-independent survey does. It does not measure what the fishing industry lands. It measures what scientists find at sea, along the west coast in summer and the south coast in autumn.

It is one of the most interesting parts of how Cape hake is managed, as well as one of the most important.
Catch records tell you what came out of the water, and the survey tells you what is there, year in and year out, in the same areas, using the same methodology. Sustainable quotas depend on scientists being able to use both sets of data.

➡️ Learn more about the science behind the South African trawl fishery at https://sadstia.co.za/management-markets/

04/08/2026

A research survey at sea is one of the cheapest things an R8.5 billion per year industry does, and one of the most important.

Each year, scientists with the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment survey the hake resource off South Africa's coast. The estimates they bring back feed into a fisheries management system that now stretches back over four decades. Their research is one of the things Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) auditors rely on to assess the fishery and certify it as sustainable and well-managed.

The value runs in a chain: The survey produces the data. The data support the fishery's management. The certification opens the European markets Cape hake depends on. Behind it all sit billions of rand in annual sales and thousands of jobs in coastal towns.

That is what regular, twice-yearly research surveys protect. They are not an expense at the edge of the industry, but the foundation it rests on.

➡️ Learn about the science that underpins the MSC certification at https://sadstia.co.za/management-markets/

29/07/2026

A trawl net at the end of its working life used to have one destination. Landfill.

In South Africa's hake fishery, that has changed. Worn and damaged nets are collected and recycled, kept out of the ground and given a second life. Shredded, washed and densified into clean plastic flakes, the old nets become raw material for new, high-value plastic products. The process keeps waste out of landfill and creates value in the coastal towns where the fishery operates.

It is a small piece of a larger shift in how the industry treats its own footprint. The same fishery that maps where it trawls, protects seabirds and guards vulnerable seabed ecosystems also asked a plainer question. What happens to our gear when we are finished with it?

The answer used to be landfill. It is not anymore.

➡️ See more at https://f.mtr.cool/njyrcxhbab

23/07/2026

Bottom trawling off South Africa happens inside a line most people have never heard of.

It is called the trawl ring-fence, and it holds the entire hake trawl fishery to grounds that have been fished for decades. That footprint covers 4.8 percent of South Africa's ocean territory. The rest is closed to trawling, and the fishery is not permitted to expand into it.

The line was not drawn overnight. It began in 2008 as a voluntary undertaking by the industry, before it was written into trawl permit conditions and made binding. It was reinforced in 2019, when several marine protected areas were declared inside the trawl footprint, and again in 2025, when the industry worked with environmental scientists and government to establish a set of voluntary seabed management areas.

What that leaves is a fishery operating inside a footprint that is fixed, mapped and scientifically understood. Smaller over time, not larger.

It is the part of the trawling story that is rarely told.

➡️ Read the full piece at https://f.mtr.cool/tybyxboayl

22/07/2026

Estelle van der Merwe is Managing Director of OCEAN Action Network. Her working life is built around protecting the sea, the kind of work measured in policy, data and long campaigns. So it is worth noticing how she answers when asked what the ocean means to her.

"I think the ocean is or should be important to all of us. It is a source of life. It is a source of joy. It's always beautiful to behold, and we always feel great when we're next to the ocean."

Her answer is not data or strategy... it is joy.

That is easy to dismiss as soft, until you consider that nobody works to protect something they feel nothing for. The science, the certifications, the catch limits and the seabed surveys all rest on a simpler foundation. People who looked at the ocean and decided it was worth the trouble.

Across its history, the hake fishery has chosen the harder, more careful path. Underneath every one of those decisions is the same instinct Estelle describes. A pull towards the water, and a sense that it matters.

Protection tends to follow affection, not the other way around.

A reminder of what is worth protecting ➡️ https://f.mtr.cool/cybpyntxdz

Address

2nd Floor, Harbour Place, Martin Hammerschlag Way
Cape Town

Telephone

+27 (0)21 425 2727

Website

http://sadstia.co.za/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when South African Deep-Sea Trawling Industry Association posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.