- Average tuna boat costs between $5000 to $7000 a day to operate
- Catches for last 5 years averaged to $2000/$3000 per day, foreign overfishing blamed
Tuna processing at Fiji Fish Marketing Group Limited.
By RANOBA BAOA
The Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama has responded to calls made by the Fiji Tuna Boat Owners Association and stakeholders regarding overfishing by foreign subisdised fishing vessels.
A meeting chaired by the Prime Minister, himself was conducted last week with Government departments and stakeholders of the industry.
The concerns by the association was that our local tuna boats were producing 50 per cent below break even.
This means that a local tuna boat is producing half of what it costs to keep it at sea and the results may result in the collapse of the industry.
It is understood that overfishing concerns by foreign vessels have been an ongoing issue in recent times but they have not been seriously looked into until now.
Association president, Grahame Southwick said: “On Tuesday (last week) the PM himself intervened and issued an instruction to all Government department concerned with the Industry.
“The Prime Minister said: ‘…the Fiji Fishing Industry Must NOT be allowed to collapse’,” Mr Southwick recalled.
“Further emergency meetings were held all day on Wednesday (last week) by his (the Prime Minister) directive and the matter was now being considered.”
And with this favourable twist, the industry will await the considerations made, Mr Southwick.
Association ensures
The association Mr Southwick assured it would its utmost best to control the problems internally.
Overfishing by foreign vessels are threatening the viability of our local fishing industry, Mr Southwick noted.
This is evident with increasing regional and international reports on overfishing on the big eye tuna, albacore and yellow fin by foreign vessels.
“An average Tuna Boat costs between $5000 to $7000 a day to operate and catches for the last 5 years have averaged to $2000 / $3000 per day,” Mr Southwick said.
“This situation is getting worse by the day and so long as there are state-subsidised boat out fishing (and this is likely to be for the next 10 years) the situation will not improve.”
He said the subsidised vessels were being paid up to $700,000 per year to fish the stocks down.
He said this was a deliberate plan to take hold of the Pacific tuna stocks by the foreign fishing companies.
Greenpeace
Meanwhile international non-government organisation says big markets, the United States and China have refused to reduce their efforts on reducing fish stocks.
This was a plea by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission meeting held in Cairns, Australia recently.
The release said: “The discussions had been at a deadlock over conservation and management measures needed to reverse overfishing of the region’s big eye tuna stocks.
“As a result, the meeting failed to take action to end overfishing and instead agreed weak measures that will result in little or no improvements to the dire state of the region’s valuable tuna stocks.”
In response to this Mr Southwick said: “No one is more concerned about the state of the industry than the industry itself.
“We are the ones in the front line being cut down and both the Government and the industry have their best people working on the problem, but the situation is extremely critical.”