'There are multiple people exploiting those species'

The South African fishing NPO strives to promote small-scale fisheries for ecological, economic and social sustainability.

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the bigger markets.

"There are multiple people exploiting those species and these biological species are not productive to maximum amounts to be taken out.

"Most of our line fish species aggregate and they spawn. They should not be taken out of the water because they haven't yet laid their eggs. Those are the kind of things we are trying," she said.

Ms Pillay said that most of their data informing their SASSI assessments came from the government.

"We speak to the fishing industry, we are trying to, and we're slowly trying to get data from small-scale fishers, but as you know, small-scale fishers have been marginalised for years and years. In terms of getting their data has been difficult. We have been working with Abalobi, who have been collecting the data from their different communities, and hopefully we can use that data to start using it in some of those species that are critical for the small communities," she said.

Ms Pillay said that WWF has been working for about 17 years with small-scale fishers and has trained about 70 youth who are now employed through the Stony Point penguin colony. "We've got youth that are running our bait and underwater remote camera tracks, and they’re collecting the data for us, so we can see what's in Betty’s Bay MPA (Marine Protected Area).