Haliotis Midas

Appearance

The size of the shell varies between 12 and 20 cm (4.7–7.9 in). "The large shell has a rounded-oval shape and is moderately convex. The distance of the apex from the margin about equals one-fifth the greatest length of the shell.

Range and habitat

Haliotis Midas is endemic to the waters off South Africa.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

H. Midae are herbivores, feeding on kelp and red and green algae.

In crisis

It is highly sought after by criminal organisations and a thriving black market exists for it, leading to a catastrophic decline in stocks. H. Midae is endangered due to severe overfishing from uncontrolled poaching driven by consumer demand in East Asia. 90% of exports go to Hong Kong. Numerous East Asian poaching gangs have created an organised criminal enterprise in conjunction with local criminals and fishers, leading to a catastrophic decline in the species.

In most areas of former abundance, evidence indicates that populations have not been able to keep up with the level of poaching, leading to recruitment failure. The threat to the perlemoen led it to being banned from all types of harvesting and listed on CITES and the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act 10 of 2004 (NEMBA). It was later removed from both registers due to pressure from the fishing industry.

Haliotis Midas is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Haliotis Midas, Wikidata item Q3643309. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.