Cape Town - Valli Moosa, the minister of environmental affairs and tourism, literally finds himself between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Forty species of fish traditionally caught by long lines are either depleted or under severe pressure.
The first warning was sounded in December 2000 when Moosa declared an emergency in terms of section 16 of the Marine Living Resources Act and banned outright the commercial long-line fishing of 40 fish species along the entire South African coastline.
Shaheen Moolla, special adviser to Moosa, said the minister realised hardship would result for some people and that up to 300 jobs could be lost.
He, however, had to weigh that up against the need to conserve the fish species in terms of the fish and agriculture code for responsible fishing.
Earlier this month Moosa announced that for the first time rights were allocated for traditional line fish fishery.
Previously line fish fishers operated under exemptions instead of rights.
Out of the 742 applications received, 126 rights were granted for full commercial rights while 250 limited commercial rights were granted.
Moolla said the defiant attitude by some fishermen by going ahead without long-line fishing rights amounted to general lawlessness.
"The minister will take a very hard line approach. People who fish illegally will be arrested."
The department needed to allocate fishing rights in order to regulate fish covered by traditional line fisheries and to ensure the sustainability of the resource.
"I don't think Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) is in any way delusional about the fact that in regulating something like the line-fish resources, we will be faced by some job losses in the near term. That is a reality.
"But MCM is not looking at the near term or narrow picture here. In the broader scheme of things the department and its minister allocated fishing rights in a limited fishery.
"Those limited fishers are intended to take away or reduce the hardship of our poor fishermen who rely on fishing for their income, get them out of the poverty trap that was subsistence fishing in the lobster and abalone fisheries and allow them to enter commercial fisheries."
Moolla said the department had an obligation to ensure that every coastal community had access to fishing resources.
"The reality is that whatever we do is not going to be acceptable to everyone. It's a case of ensuring that the process of rights allocations is a just allocation.
"It's however not going to happen in one allocation," he said.