Journalists are seldom specialists, so any investigation into a complex sector like fishing needs to begin as an in-depth conversation with the most knowledgeable person you can find.

When it comes to understanding South Africa's troubled but fascinating fishing industry, few people have as broad a view as Shaheen Moolla. A lawyer by training, Moolla once headed the country's fisheries management and compliance unit, wrote some of the sector's key policies and has since advised governments, businesses and NGOs on marine and coastal governance.

He has spent years navigating the politics of quotas, the science of fish stocks, the rise of small-scale cooperatives and the sprawling underworld of poaching. There are spaces in the world of fishing where he is feared and deeply unpopular.

I sat down with Moolla, not to dissect a single crisis or quota dispute, but to ask a more basic question: how do you even begin to map out this vast and fragmented industry? What are the sectors, the issues and who are the people worth talking to?

This conversation sets the scene for a new series of stories that will dig into South Africa's fisheries - stories of big corporations, small-scale canneries, trek netters, hand line fishers, poachers, policy battles, marine protected areas and the changing seas themselves.

Where does one even start when trying to understand the SA fishing industry?

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