If there were a G10 of fishing nations – countries with an outsized influence over global fisheries governance – South Africa would be a member. That is the view of Felix Ratheb, Chief Executive of Sea Harvest, who points to the prominent role South Africans now play in some of the world’s most influential seafood and sustainability organisations. Yet, while South Africa is helping to shape global fisheries policy, misaligned domestic policy risks undermining one of the country’s most successful industries.
Ratheb is Chairman of the Groundfish Forum, a position that places him at the helm of a network of more than 300 senior seafood executives representing major fishing companies across the globe. He works closely with former I&J executive, Jonty Jankovich, who is chair of the CEO Global Harvest Council. In this capacity, Jankovich plays a strong coordinating role among vertically integrated fishing companies worldwide.
Joining Ratheb and Jankovich on the global fisheries stage are Madoda Khumalo of Sea Harvest and Johann Augustyn of SADSTIA who serve on high-level governance bodies within the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Khumalo represents South Africa on the MSC Stakeholder Council, where he contributes to stakeholder dialogue and ongoing improvements within the certification system, while Augustyn serves on the Technical Advisory Board, a committee that shapes the standards and methodologies underpinning the MSC programme.
“From a global perspective, we are everywhere!” laughs Ratheb. “These leadership roles give South Africa a voice far louder than the size of the local industry would suggest and I don’t think it’s appreciated, how well we’ve done globally as a fishing industry.”
MSC certification has enabled South Africa’s hake businesses to access European markets and build resilient export-focused operations.
In an interview, Ratheb explained the importance of global representation, saying that on a global scale fishing lacks a unified voice. Unlike agriculture or energy, fisheries are highly fragmented with operations spread across jurisdictions and species, and with limited coordinated communication. This failing leaves space for simplified narratives that focus on harm without acknowledging trade-offs. It also places high-performing fisheries in the same category as poorly regulated ones, despite their very different impacts.
Ratheb does not dispute the need for sustainable fisheries – saying that without sustainable resources, there can be no successful fishing businesses – but he considers the intense polarisation between the global environmental lobby and the fishing industry to be a major challenge.
It is for this reason that he took up an invitation to join other chief executives in the Sustainable Markets Initiative, a private sector organisation that is working for global change by positioning sustainability at the centre of markets, industries and supply chains. It is led by the United Kingdom’s King Charles.
“You have to be involved with these types of initiatives,” says Ratheb, “otherwise your voice will never be heard. The fishing industry is always going to be portrayed in a negative light. We’re never going to be portrayed as the people that provide food in a cost-effective, sustainable way, with the lowest impact on the planet.”
Ratheb’s contention that sustainable fishing produces food with a comparatively low environmental impact is supported by a paper published recently in Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture. Written by Duncan Leadbitter and co-authors, the paper determined the cost of replacing the animal protein produced by marine fisheries: an estimated 5 million km2 of agricultural land (an area larger than the extent of intact rain forest in Brazil) would be required to produce the equivalent protein from cattle and chickens.
The study also shows that terrestrial and freshwater species are more likely to be threatened with extinction than marine species. This is because agriculture converts complex natural ecosystems into simple, human-dominated systems, whereas well-managed fisheries seek to work within natural ecosystem structure and function.
For Ratheb, an urgent priority for the global fishing industry is to achieve sector-wide sustainability.
In this regard he is a strong supporter of the MSC, the world’s most recognised certification programme for sustainable fisheries which has certified South Africa’s trawl fishery for hake for more than 20 years.
Whereas MSC certification was once a “nice to have” for South African hake, it has – in Ratheb’s words – become “a licence to operate”.
“It has forced us to be best in class,” he reflects.
However, Ratheb is cautious about what he sees as a growing tendency within the MSC to make its fisheries standard increasingly difficult and costly to achieve. He argues that while high standards are important, an ever-rising bar risks concentrating certification among a shrinking minority of fisheries, rather than driving broader improvements globally.
“The question is whether you want five percent that are the best on the planet and spend a fortune complying, or whether you bring more fisheries into the MSC programme so you end up with far more sustainable resources overall.” He adds that environmental NGOs have an important role to play, but warns that overly adversarial approaches can be counterproductive.
“Rather than telling consumers they can’t eat fish, a better message is to say: if it has the logo, it’s sustainable – you can eat it.”
A sweet spot for South African hake
According to Ratheb, the South African hake fishery is currently in one of the strongest positions in its 125-year history, largely as a result of shifts in global whitefish markets. He explains that hake competes with cod and haddock in key export destinations, particularly in Europe. That market has tightened sharply following major quota cuts in cod fisheries, with global cod catches reduced by around 50 percent over the past two years. This situation has been compounded by the sanctions placed by the European Union on Pacific cod from Russia.
A significant shortage of wild-caught whitefish in the markets where South African hake is sold, has translated into sustained price growth, with the industry seeing increases of more than 10 percent in foreign currency terms for two consecutive years. It has also benefited from limited exposure to the United States market, insulating it from recent trade uncertainty and allowing producers to redirect volumes into Europe and other high-demand destinations without difficulty.
The South African hake fishery is currently in one of the strongest positions in its 125-year history.
While the past three years saw an unexpected drop in catch rates that caused concern within the industry, scientific surveys indicated that the resource remained healthy. Those assessments were borne out in 2025, with catch rates rebounding by around 40 percent.
With markets strong and catch rates recovering, Ratheb describes the industry as tightly regulated, monitored by scientists, audited by independent certification bodies and integrated into some of the world’s most demanding seafood markets. He says it supports thousands of good jobs in South Africa because beneficiation takes place locally – in contrast to many other fishing nations that export raw material to Asian countries for processing. Hake fillets, fish fingers, folded, moulded and quick frozen hake portions are produced on labour-intensive factory vessels or in large, sophisticated shore-based plants, some of which are situated in rural areas where work opportunities are scarce.
Yet, in spite of the clear economic benefits the hake fishery brings to South Africa, Ratheb sees a policy disconnect that could undermine its long-term future. He says that the current 15-year period for fishing rights is misaligned with the scale and timing of the investments the trawling industry is required to make. The problem is most clearly illustrated by the pressing challenge of fleet renewal. According to Ratheb, the average age of the South African trawl fleet is approaching 40 years, raising concerns around safety, efficiency and future competitiveness. Replacing vessels or undertaking major upgrades requires substantial capital outlay, often running into hundreds of millions of rand per vessel.
“People are not going to invest at that scale if they don’t have security of tenure,” he says.
For a highly capital-intensive sector, security of tenure is central not only to economic viability but also to long-term sustainability because operators manage resources differently when they have confidence they will retain access over a longer horizon.
“There’s a direct correlation between well-managed fisheries and tenure,” says Ratheb, adding that longer and more secure rights encourage more responsible decision-making. “You can do everything right in terms of managing the resource, but if the policy environment doesn’t reward long-term thinking, you still end up with short-term behaviour.”
In an upcoming review of the Marine Living Resources Act, the industry will argue that significantly longer rights allocations – closer to 30 years – are needed to make large-scale investment economically rational and to support long-term employment and sustainability goals. Driving the argument is the recognition that the industry has changed fundamentally since 1994, when the government first linked the allocation of fishing rights to black economic empowerment. By government’s own estimation, the deep-sea trawling industry is today 86 percent black owned. In Ratheb’s view, instead of trying to make further adjustments to the structure of a transformed industry, government should be asking “how can we make it a more attractive industry for investment?” Lengthening the period of rights tenure would do that, as would addressing the thorny issue of rights transfer which requires right-holders to sell rights and assets only to entities that are more transformed than they are. This has had the unintended consequence of locking black investors into their investments in fishing.
“Because of this policy, which has not been properly thought through, black investors are stuck in this industry. They can’t get out because they can’t dilute their black ownership, which is illogical,” he explains.
As South Africa enters the 2026 fishing year, Ratheb points out the stark contrast between the country’s global influence and its domestic policy constraints. Internationally, South Africans are helping to shape the future of sustainable fishing, but at home policy frameworks have not kept pace with the realities of a capital-intensive, globally competitive industry.
For Ratheb, the risk is not immediate collapse, but missed opportunity. With strong markets, recovering stocks and deep local beneficiation, the hake fishery is well positioned to deliver long-term economic and environmental returns. Whether it does so, argues Ratheb, will depend on whether domestic policy can align with the same long-term thinking South Africa is now advocating on the global stage.
