Lobster fishing season to open as from January 15, 2023 for two months |20 December 2022

The press conference (Photo: Patrick Joubert)

The lobster fishing season will now open from January 15, 2023 to March 14, 2023 instead of as from this December (2022).

The announcement was made by Rodney Govinden, head of fisheries department at the Seychelles Fishing Authority (SFA), during a press conference held at the authority’s headquarters, Espace Building, yesterday afternoon.

Also present were SFA’s assistant manager for enforcement, Ronny Malvina; the assistant manager for fisheries resource management, Elisa Socrate and the assistant manager license and permit, Karyss August.

Mr Govinden said that the Ministry of Fisheries and the Blue Economy, together with SFA, have decided to open the lobster fishing season as from January 15, 2023 due to complaints by lobster fishers that December is not the ideal time to fish for the species on account of bad weather during that period.

He added that the fishing season has also been maintained to only two months like for the 2021-2022 season (December 12, 2021 to February 16, 2022) due to a decrease in the number of young juvenile lobsters, following a survey on the abundance and biomass of all lobsters, held in October 2022 at twenty sites in West Mahé.

Mr Govinden added that following the lobster survey held with the help of the fishers, there is a slight increase in the number of adult lobsters within and above the minimum legal size of 7.5cm which is permitted for them to be caught under the law.

He noted that the increase in adult lobsters above the size of 7.5 cm is 25% more than that found during the last survey in 2021.

Apart from the minimum legal size of 7.5 cm, fishers are also not allowed to catch females carrying eggs.

With regard to fishing licenses, Ms August said that there are normally only sixteen such licenses available for the fishing season of which ten will be distributed to fishers on Mahé, four will be made available for fishers on Praslin and the remaining two licenses for fishers on La Digue.

She noted that the licenses, which are not permanent, will be made available as from January 9, 2023 on a first come first serve basis.

She added that fishers have to come in person at SFA to apply for a license at R500 along with a compliance bond of R5000 refundable unless in the event of an offence.

A person can be fined up to R20,000 for breaking lobster fishing regulations or fishing without a license.

On his part, Mr Malvina said that lobsters in food outlets and tourism establishments, including at landing sites will be monitored to ensure their authenticity.

He added they also monitor poaching, which is also alarming and some cases of which are being investigated.

He noted that legal fishers are issued with a permit book to record their catch and any other fishers or middleman without a permit book are considered as illegal fishers and could face prosecution in the event of being in possession of a sizeable amount of lobsters.

He said that patrols being conducted at the different lobster sites are acting as deterrent against poaching.

For the 2019-2020 season a total of 5.24 tonnes of lobster were caught while a total of 6.14 tonnes were caught for the 2020-2021 season, with only 2.05 tonnes caught last season (2021-2022) due bad weather which hindered the lobster fishing activity.

The lobsters are sold on the local market between R300 and R350 per kg.

Patrick Joubert