Local tuna industry struggling due to declining catch

MANADO, Indonesia – What used to be an overwhelming $420-million worth in the early 2000s, the country’s tuna industry is now pegged at 30 percent lower than what it used to be when it was at its peak.

“I could see the Philippine tuna industry to be in a way still healthy but at the same time it is struggling, especially with the declining catch,” said Marfenio Tan, president of the SOCSKSARGEN Federation of Fishing and Allied Industry (SFFAI).

Tan said the Philippine tuna industry is now in the vicinity of $294 million and could continue to plunge because of certain factors such as climate change that affects both the quantity and the quality of the catch.

Tan said that the quantity of tuna caught even in the area encompassing Celebes Sea and the Sulawesi Sea as well as the Moro Gulf has decreased.

Tan, who is one of the seven Filipino incorporators who own the P.T. Sinar canning factory in the port city of Bitung, in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, was among the delegates to the 30th Vice-Chairmen’s Conference of the Philippine-Indonesia Border Committee cooperation that formally opened yesterday here in Manado.

P.T. Sinar used to be owned by Purefoods, Inc. that ventured into tuna canning processing plant in Bitung before the bilateral fisheries agreement between Indonesia and the Philippines expired.

Tan also attributed the decline in the tuna catch to the ban on fishing that the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) imposed.

A forecast of at least a 10 percent drop in global tuna catch has been estimated particularly with the WCPFC ban which is part of a package of conservation measures, spread over a period of three years starting in 2009, aimed at reducing tuna mortality by a minimum of 30 percent from the 2001-2004 annual average.

Tan said when the tuna industry was at its peak in the early 2000s, the daily catch was placed at 300 to 500 tons but now has been reduced by 30 percent.

He said that the decline in the tuna catch also meant the displacement of at least 45,000 fishermen out of the 150,000 who directly and indirectly benefitted from the already rising tuna industry.

The situation, Tan said has forced Filipino fishermen to venture further out to sea just to catch tuna and usually getting into the territorial waters of Indonesia, Palau and Papua New Guinea.

Philippine Consul General Noel Servigon, based here in Manado, stressed that the repatriation of Filipino fishermen caught in the territorial waters of Indonesia usually takes a long time.

“There are two things that we really have to closely look into before our fishermen are repatriated. First, it really takes some time before we can fully establish the identities of these fishermen because some of them may be Indonesians who claim to be Filipinos. Then, they have to go through the process under Indonesian law before they are sent home,” Servigon said.

Besides, Servigon said, these fishermen are usually repeat offenders who have been arrested several times already but still keep encroaching into Indonesian territorial waters illegally.