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Conservation comes first as appeal court judges confirm that drone fishing remains illegal

Conservation comes first as appeal court judges confirm that drone fishing remains illegal
SA National Parks has erected 'No Drones' warning signs in some parks to remind anglers that this new form of fishing is illegal. (Image source: Winkler et al. 2021)
Tony Carnie
By Tony Carnie
17 Jul 2024
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The Supreme Court of Appeal has confirmed that drone fishing is illegal. Therefore, anglers can be prosecuted if caught using remote-controlled and motorised technology to drop their baited hooks further out to sea.

In a ruling handed down on 16 July, five judges dismissed a legal appeal by Gannet Works and four other companies that make, market or sell angling equipment such as bait-carrying drones and other remote-controlled bait-carrying devices. 

Gannet, a Cape Town-based company, states on its website that it has sold more than 20,000 drone fishing and release systems to anglers in 147 countries.

However, concerned about the potential impact of this technology on South Africa’s marine resources, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) published a notice in February 2022, warning recreational anglers that drone fishing was illegal and that they would be taken to court if caught.

A Gannet fishing drone advertisement. (Image: Gannet)



In simple terms, drone-assisted fishing provides anglers with a considerable advantage over conventional recreational fishers by enabling them to place their hooks and bait much further from the shoreline than those who cast their lines manually.

Read more: IslandPlas initiative aims to tackle plastic pollution as African islands drown in a sea of waste

Top-class anglers can manually cast lines up to 160m, though most shore fishermen can only manage about 100m. Drone anglers, however, can deposit hooks up to 500m offshore with pinpoint accuracy.

Several South African fish scientists are worried about the implications of this relatively new craze on heavily exploited or vulnerable species. At the same time, many shore-based anglers also question the ethics of new techniques that provide richer anglers with what they see as an unfair advantage.

When the DFFE warned that it would prosecute drone fishers, Gannet and the other four companies went to court after their sales plummeted, but the Gauteng High Court rejected their application to permit drone fishing.

Now the Supreme Court of Appeal has confirmed this.

The court noted that the Constitution imposes a legal obligation on the government to protect the environment for the benefit of present and future generations through “reasonable legislative and other measures”.

SA National Parks has erected 'No Drones' warning signs in some parks to remind anglers that this new form of fishing is illegal. (Image source: Winkler et al. 2021)



In a ruling written by Judge Fikile Mokgohloa, the court noted that recreational anglers were only authorised to fish “manually”,  and this definition implicitly excluded the use of remote-controlled, motorised equipment, such as drones.

Legal counsel for Gannet and the other companies argued that once a fishing permit was issued, an angler was free to engage in any form of fishing activity “using whatever methods that may be available” (including aircraft), provided this method was not specifically prohibited by law.

Mokgohloa described this argument as “ill conceived”.

“As stated earlier, once the angler has been issued with the permit for angling, the angler is not at liberty to use any method other than the one that is provided for in the regulations, that is, fishing by manually operating a rod, reel and line or one or more separate lines to which no more than 10 hooks are attached per line. To use any other method other than the authorised one would be unlawful.” DM

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