SANCOR Newsletter Issue #172: March 2003
How much would you be willing to sacrifice for a healthy Marine Science in South Africa?
Colleagues
It was with a sense of frustration and distress that I learnt of both the recent, and the imminent, departure of yet more colleagues from Marine and Coastal Management (M&CM). These departures will mean that the state has lost at least eleven experts with PhDs in marine science over the last five years. Over the same time period, it will have lost at least six senior personnel (scientific and technical) without PhDs but with a minimum of 10 years research experience, and some three more will have retired. M&CM has, in the same period of time, recruited precisely ZERO comparable experts to replace them!
Aside from the devastating impact that this must have on the ability of the state to conduct impartial and quality science in pursuit of the needs of fisheries and coastal management, it also seems to mean that the few remaining scientists have to spend increasingly more time on matters of management and less on science. I suspect this is causing morale to take a nosedive among the scientists at M&CM, and it is also, I believe, having a profoundly negative effect on the wider marine science community in southern and South Africa.
The reason for this is that M&CM, and its predecessor the SFRI, used to house the greatest concentration of active, marine science practitioners in the country. Indeed, there were more than three times as many marine scientists (with doctorates) at M&CM than there were (in total) scattered sparsely elsewhere in the country. There were experts in all fields: geochemistry, physical, chemical and biological oceanography, fish and fisheries biology, hydro-acoustics and even genetics - to name but a few of the disciplines. That body of expertise made a substantial contribution to local, regional and international collaborative science projects and to the training of NEW marine scientists, through both direct and indirect student supervision and teaching. The subjects of marine science, in all their glory, were kept alive and up-to-date, for all practitioners in the country and the region. Alas, no longer. Many of the large local, regional and international collaborative programmes (especially those operating at the inter-government level) are failing to spend their budgets, because (in part) there is nobody with any time to conduct the research. And while some keen staff members at M&CM are prepared to supervise young research students, given their other commitments, this number is small. Which means that new scientists are being trained by only a handful of (often overworked) persons at a few academic institutions across the country.
That does not mean to say that there have not been winners from the exodus. Far from it! The winners are those that have been awarded contracts by the state to undertake research that the state can itself no longer conduct. It is ironic that these seem to be previous staff members of M&CM and the historically strong academic universities! Ironic, because the individuals involved are predominantly white. And while the academic institutions may be involved in the transformation of professional marine science (at least in theory), the private consultants are not obliged to train research students at all, especially if they are deemed to be sole-providers!
In essence, we have seen a delegation and privatization of the state’s research responsibilities, so that M&CM now just manages - both out-sourced research (with presumably some sort of role as quality controller) and fisheries. Of course, this is in line with privatization elsewhere in the civil service, though whether it is by design, assisted default or bad planning, can only be guessed at.
It is not my intention by this letter to analyse the reasons for the departure of M&CM personnel, nor do I pose solutions to the problems that M&CM currently face – that is for the state to resolve. I am only asking, as a personal member of SANCOR, that in its deliberations, the state should realize (or remember) that the health of the science at M&CM directly influences the current (and future) health of marine science and marine science education nationally (possibly even regionally). I would rather have a strong, happy, vibrant and research-active M&CM than have the DEAT contribute money to the Joint Venture Initiative with the NRF, and I would far rather see some of the revenue from the MLRF being ploughed into permanent appointments at M&CM than into short term contracts that benefit (in many instances) the few.
Yours, I suspect, in isolation
Mark J Gibbons
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely that of the author and the contents do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the SANCOR steering committee and/or editorial panel.
