Tag Archives: Meermin

Weekly Press Review – 15 November 2013

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The big maritime headline of the week was the adoption of the Marine Living Resources Amendments Bill by the National Assembly. The bill was welcomed as a way of transforming the inequalities of the past.

Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson said that the legislation would realise her department’s goal of empowering small-scale fishermen and women and the communities that they come from.

Let us hope that that is in fact the case.

The slave ship, the Meermin was back in the news this week as a renewed interest in the vessel and its story have generated a greater public interest in the recovery of the wreck.

Jaco Boshoff, marine archaeologist at Iziko Museums said that there had been many extensive searches for the wreck over the years, but thus far, nothing had been recovered. He added, “At the moment, funding is what is preventing us from completing the search. It is, in a sense, like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Boshoff also admitted that sadly there is a chance that “as the historians state, the wreck does not exist anymore.”

Hopefully that is not the case as it would mean a huge waste of time, effort and money.

Weekly Press Review – 8 November 2013

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Rock lobster quotas were back in the press last week. In an attempt to aid the recovery of the drastically depleted stocks, the fisheries department has reduced this season’s quota for West Coast rock lobster.

According to DAFF, the stocks are so depleted that they are at only three percent of what they were 100 years ago. In response to this drastic scenario the TAC has been reduced from 2,426 tons to 2,167 tons.

According to acting deputy director-general of fisheries management at the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), Desmond Stevens, the move was to ensure that the lobster population was managed “in an ecologically sound manner based on proven scientific principles.”

This is quite an interesting comment as the fisheries department has been known to completely ignore “proven scientific principles”in the past and over ride advised quotas.

Let us hope that this does not become a case of far too little, far too late.

History buffs will be interested in the case of the slave ship the Meermin which is back in the news this week thanks the VOC Foundation who have created a replica of the famous ship to be displayed in the Iziko Museum.

In 1766, as the ship sailed between Madagascar and the Cape Colony, the 140 slaves on board mutinied and gained control of the vessel. It was agreed that the slaves would be returned to Madagascar as free men, but the crew of the Meermin did not honour the agreement and tricked the slaves into heading towards land that was not, in fact Madagascar, where the Dutch were waiting to capture them.

It is believed that the Meermin was wrecked near Struisbaai, but the wreck has never been found.