Perlemoen

Cleaned up the garden yesterday. Piles of perlemoen (abalone) shells with grass growing over them, half buried in the sand behind the shed, brought back memories of the days when we were allowed to harvest and eat this delicacy free from the sea. Today, superstitious belief in its aphrodisiac qualities has led to uncontrollable plundering of this resource along our coastline for a foreign market. The price tag is so high that the criminals involved risk their lives in shark-infested waters and gunfights on the beach to get their loot to the buyers. I say criminals because our government has always placed a restriction on harvesting by recreational divers for the very purpose of preserving our perlemoen for future generations.

In a way, one can hardly blame the poachers, who are usually at the bottom end of the economic scale, for succumbing to offers from organised crime to help them feed their families when they have no other means of employment. But once the resource has been eradicated, what next? Limpets? Mussels? Not unless they have aphrodisiac qualities. Law enforcement is unable or unwilling to effectively deal with this plundering, while the recreational divers (us) are now denied the pleasure of the occasional treat of a free meal from the sea on the premise that they will seriously harm the availability of the resource. What fools are these that presume to apply different rules to different people?

Corruption and greed will ensure the extinction of yet another species that was provided as part of the whole earth's ecosystem for our use. Are Man's days also numbered?