The seafood delicacy can sell for £420 a plate in China. As demand outstrips legal supply, divers from the poor suburbs of Cape Town are making up the shortfall
A muscular, bald man moved through the kelp, hunting forbidden shellfish. His scuba rig bubbled and hissed. He was nearly 100 metres from the seashore and 20 metres below the surface, which was grey and flat like a lake. The water was clear, giving far range of sight. Below him the seafloor spread out until it blurred into nothingness.
It was dangerous territory, but Shuhood (not his real name) accepted the risks. For more than a decade he’d been an abalone poacher, lifting a marine snail worth hundreds of pounds per kilo in Asia from reefs around South Africa. The first time he’d used scuba gear, without training, he’d almost drowned, held down by his weight belt and a mesh bag stuffed with abalone. Another day, his air hose broke underwater, and he blacked out as he swam up to the surface. One night the skipper of a boat he was working on ran him over while fleeing a police patrol vessel, and Shuhood was almost chopped by the propellers. Months later, a poacher was decapitated in a similar incident off Robben Island.
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