Police bust a ring of perlemoen poachers at the weekend after they had fired shots from the shore at the group, who were making off with perlemoen worth R180 000 allegedly stolen from Cape Point Nature Reserve.
Four men, wearing scuba diving gear, were arrested as they came ashore on Saturday night to recover the 1 705 shucked perlemoen which they had hidden earlier in bags behind the rocks on the beach.
The shellfish, stolen from Cape Point's marine reserve where it is illegal to remove any marine life, were destined for the lucrative black markets of the Far East.
More arrests are expected today.
Inspector Chris Rossouw, head of the four-man team in the police's organised crime unit tasked with stamping out smuggling of marine resources, said on Sunday that the bust had come after a tip-off from a member of the public.
"The poachers had hidden their catch in 13 bags behind some rocks at Cape Point. A member of the public saw the bags on Saturday and alerted the authorities."
Police and staff of Marine and Coastal Management moved in to the area where the bags were and positioned observers that night.
"About 9.30pm they saw a boat coming towards the shore. Four divers jumped overboard and swam ashore. They came to where the bags of perlemoen were hidden, picked them up and headed back towards the boat. Police arrested the divers and shouted at the skipper on the boat to cut his engines. He started to leave the scene and police fired shots at the boat, but he escaped.
"We alerted police at slipways around the coast, and about three hours later the boat was found in Hermanus harbour. The skipper was not on the boat when the police found it, but we have sufficient evidence to make more arrests today," Rossouw said.
Police say although 550kg of perlemoen were recovered, this represented only the tip of the iceberg in a country which has become a haven for perlemoen poachers and the focus of the world's illegal abalone trade.
As other countries pour resources into cracking down on marine poachers, criminals are increasingly taking advantage of South Africa's inability to protect her marine resources and estimations are that stolen perlemoen worth millions of rand leave the country every year.
The bust also comes as Marine and Coastal Management, the Department of Environment Affairs directorate responsible for managing marine resources, is in a state of disarray after the head of the organisation and two senior officials were removed from their posts this month following an internal audit which showed a chaotic department where millions of rand had gone missing.
Rossouw said he was sure the perlemoen was destined for the overseas market as 99% of smuggling operations of this size were involved the illegal export trade.
The perlemoen was most commonly flown out of the country through Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban airports, although some were taken across the borders to Swaziland and Botswana and then flown overseas.
With only four police officers in the Western Cape dedicated to controlling organised poaching of marine resources, and only one sniffer dog in the country trained to detect frozen perlemoen when packed for export, the authorities are fighting a losing battle.
Rossouw said: "The perlemoen is frozen and packed in foam containers, usually just marked 'fish'.
"Customs do spot checks at airports, but they cannot open all such containers. If no contraband products are found, the companies whose frozen goods have been opened can take legal action.
"We have one dog in South Africa which has been trained to detect perlemoen and crayfish, but she can't be everywhere at once. She is taken to work at Johannesburg and Durban, but what we need is at least one sniffer dog at Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg airports. It is very frustrating for us."
The upshot is that hundreds of tons of the illegal shellfish, worth many millions of rand, pass freely through our airports every year.
Some months ago the police's organised crime unit seized 700kg of illegal perlemoen at Cape Town International Airport.
On investigation they found that the company involved had smuggled over 10 tons of perlemoen out of South Africa in the previous six months with a black market value of
R3 million.