Cover Story
Our Fishing Industry
How is it doing and what the future holds?
Tuna prices zig zag between lows and highs, depending on the laws of supply and demand. In recent times prices for skipjack tuna have ranged from US$380 to US$750 a metric tonne.
Yellowfin tuna settled at around US$600 at the end of last year, after having risen to US$1250 in 1999. American Samoa's canneries were paying US$2200 to US$2400 for albacore tuna last year.
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There are continuing worries about the security of bigeye tuna stock. As for bluefin tuna, those cold water loving tuna giants, which can fetch up to US$100,000 each from Japan's sashimi trade, rarely venture into the warm waters of the tropical Pacific. Albacore is becoming the prized fish of the Pacific Islands tuna fishery.Why?
According to officials at the Forum Fisheries Agency, tastes are changing, even in Japan.
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Overfishing in other fisheries is causing a world shortage of white-fleshed fish and albacore flesh. As such, it is moving into a vacuum caused by the ruinous overfishing policies applied by nations engaged in some of the Indian Ocean and Atlantic fisheries. While high value bluefin sashimi is expected to retain its niche market in Japan, changing consumer trends point to steady high future prices for albacore tuna, due to a clear preference shown for its white meat compared with the red flesh of other species.
In Japan, traditional sashimi producers seem to be losing customers, with young consumers looking for more westernised food like tuna steaks and loins.
The Western Pacific tuna fishery, now the source of half the world¹s supply of canned tuna, with a catch averaging around one million tonnes a year, is still regarded as being underfished, apart from concerns about bigeye stock. Japan, Taiwan, Korea and the United States have for 30 years been the major fishers of the region. In the past few years intensifying pressure from European fishing fleets wanting to begin operating in the region has been felt.
Fourteen Spanish boats began fishing in Kiribati's 3.5 million square kilometres exclusive economic zone from October 2000. But it was not clear whether the initial 12-month agreement will be renewed. Kiribati has just allowed the first four Chinese boats into its zone. Papua New Guinea¹s exceptional rich fisheries are attracting European interest.
Fishing is now one of the fastest growing sectors of the Papua New Guinea economy. It is certainly so for Samoa, and is about to become so for French Polynesia. There, the government announced a plan to have more than 150 tuna boats operating in the territory¹s 5 million square kilometres fisheries zone, in the next five years to land 35,000 tonnes of fish annually. New Zealand has just moved into the tropical Pacific fishery. With the purchase by one of its biggest fishing companies, Sanford, of two former American-powered super-seiner vessels, it hopes to fish for canners and processers in American Samoa, Fiji and the Marshall Islands. But most Pacific Islanders are still a long way from their burning ambition of making much more from their fisheries.
Of an average of about a thousand fishing vessels engaged in the Western Pacific tuna fishery, fewer than a hundred are locally owned. Most are Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, Philippines and American ships. Some employ Pacific Islands crew; some are not the kind of ships Pacific Islanders would find acceptable in terms of living conditions and pay. Still only a fraction of the million tonnes of tuna extracted from the region each year is landed ashore locally for added value processing and canning. This is where the real fishing money lies, as the burgeoning fresh fish export trade from Fiji demonstrates.
Some Forum Fisheries Agency officials predict that the Pacific Islands will become more attractive for investment in canneries and fish processing factories as those in Europe. Even in such presently low cost producers as Thailand, they will become uncompetitive due to rising labour costs. But in some countries fishing is in trouble. In the Solomon Islands, once a major tuna canner and exporter, a war has crippled the once thriving locally owned and manned fishing fleets. There are doubts about the future of a sophisticated tuna cannery, put under full government management a few months ago, after a Japanese company withdrew from a joint venture with the government.
American Samoa, economically almost totally dependent on two big foreign canneries, is terrified that StarKist, owned by the Heinz food corporation, may close if Heinz succeeds in persuading the United States to drop duty on very low cost canned tuna from Ecuador. American Samoa pay rates begin at US$3.20 an hour against 69 cents in Ecuador. The other cannery is hinting it might need to cut output by 50 percent.
In the Marshall Islands, the hosting of up to 60 Asian fishing boats, and tuna trans-shipment vessels, is causing such pollution in the Majuro Lagoon that locals wonder whether the price is too high to pay for fishing business spin-off.
In Fiji, overfishing caused apparently by the corrupt issue of fishing licences, is threatening the viability of the local tuna stock. Internationally, the Pacific Islands are engaged in a subdued but potentially vicious fight against Japan over the conservation of the entire region¹s tuna fishery.
But will commercial fishing for tuna and reef fish always be conducted at sea? Australian businesspeople may invest heavily in farming yellowfin tuna and reef fish in the Marshall Islands. This and other forms of aquaculture, in the long term, could become an important new industry for the region.
But at this point in time the real thrust of island governments is to advise on policies that will bring them a far greater share of the wealth of tuna, now going mainly to foreign fishermen and processors.
