Professor Lorien Pichegru (“Astute ocean management is needed as African penguins hurtle towards functional extinction”, Daily Maverick, 6 October  2022) is to be commended for her continued focus, over a long period of time, on an issue of serious concern: the overall downward trend in African penguin numbers over recent decades at a rate of around 5% per annum.

Unfortunately, however, many of the comments that she (and also the statement by four NGOs she references make are either misleading or false.

For example, there is no fishery for anchovy in Algoa Bay as Pichegru states. Furthermore, she bemoans that the fisheries closures recently announced around six penguin breeding colonies “will achieve little to nothing” to arrest the penguin decline.

Quite correct, but not for the reason which she offers: that they are too little too late. Rather, this is because the impact of fishing close to these colonies is at most minimal. The priority, rather, is to identify the primary causes of the penguin decline and, if possible, to ameliorate them.

Pichegru’s contrary claim, that the science is well established that no-take zones definitely improve conditions for penguins, has recently been shown to be clearly wrong. Arguments attempting to counter those criticisms have already been rebutted by scientists who are world-leading in the pertinent field of quantitative marine resource ecosystem modelling.

Those top scientists clarified, inter alia, that those attempting this counter had failed to address the flaws identified in their own earlier analyses. These leading scientists’ comments have been brought to the attention of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE).

Pichegru calls on the DFFE Minister, Barbara Creecy, to heed existing, internationally recognised scientific research. Indeed, that is exactly what is now needed (as is also required by the Marine Living Resources Act): to make decisions based on “the best scientific evidence”.

Recently reported mathematical analyses in terms of approaches set out by an international scientific review panel show the effect on penguins of fishing around the islands to be minimal. This must qualify as the “best” such evidence. That referenced by Pichegru cannot, given that it has been mathematically demonstrated to be wrong.

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If Pichegru, the four NGOs whose statement she references, or apparently the DFFE — given its recent implementation of closures around the six islands, seek to disagree with this, their path (in terms of universally accepted practice for the exact science of mathematics) is clear. They must offer sound mathematical proof that those demonstrations are incorrect. If they are unable to do so, their arguments must be withdrawn, and with that any legally justifiable basis for the current island closures falls away.

In any case, the DFFE-organised discussions which Pichegru and the NGOs’ statement reference are now all outdated, being over six months old and overtaken by subsequent scientific developments.

Another of Pichegru’s problematic statements, in this instance as regards industry’s estimates of the cost of these fishery closures, is that: “none of their statements has ever been peer-reviewed by the scientific community, against good scientific practice.”

To the contrary, scientific calculations of these economic costs were reviewed and refined in a process (including an international workshop) of extensive review conducted over a two-year period and including an international panel of the leading scientists in the field.

One could continue to detail why many of the other comments made by Pichegru and the four NGOs are also problematic. This situation is unfortunate, because it detracts from the confidence desirably placed by the public on the reliability of their supposedly scientifically-based statements. This is also irresponsible on their part because it thereby also implicitly reflects negatively on statements made by other scientists, and the confidence laypersons will then place on them.

But the information above is alone surely sufficient to confirm that Pichegru and these four NGOs are misdirecting their efforts by focusing on island closures in trying to see the serious penguin situation rectified. Even if the flawed estimates of the effect of island closures which they are promoting were correct, imposition of these closures would still reduce the current extent of penguin decline by about only one-tenth at most.

The priority is to determine the main reasons for the penguin decline. In that respect, recent initiatives by Pichegru and colleagues to examine the possible impact of marine traffic noise on penguins are to be welcomed. DM