Philippines Looks for Value as Tuna Catch Falls

Raju Gopalakrishnan, PlanetArk 14 Jan 08;

GENERAL SANTOS CITY, Philippines - For decades, the fishermen of the southern Philippines have been going to sea for a few days, catching one or two tuna fish and living off the sales for a month.

As the catch rose to match surging demand, the Philippines became the world's fourth-largest tuna producer. Six of the country's eight tuna canneries are now at General Santos City, on the southern tip of the archipelago, and the government built a US$56 million fishport at its natural harbour. Purse seiner boats, which use huge nets that scoop up fish by the score, were increasingly used.

Last year, for the first time, the catch dwindled.

"It's only now that the tuna do not bite, not like in previous years," said Carlos Puno, captain of a boat that came back from a 32-day trip with only 48 fish, one-sixth the capacity of its hold.

Speaking as workers hauled away the fish, each weighing at least 50 kg (110 lb), a despondent Puno said he was fishing in waters about 600 miles (1,000 km) to the southeast, near the island of Papua.

Being away for so long also means that the catch is not as fresh as it could be, despite the huge slabs of ice on board, and consequently will fetch lower prices.

"I have lost money this time," Puno said, referring to fuel and other costs of keeping his boat and crew at sea. "I had some good trips last year, but this was bad. I had to come back because provisions were running out."

As late as 10 years ago, fishermen rarely needed to venture more than two or three days out to fill their hold.

No one in General Santos, knwon as the Philippines' tuna capital, disputes that fish are harder to find, but estimates of how much the catch has dwindled, and the causes, are varied.

GLOBAL WARMING?

Domingo Teng, who owns one of the biggest fishing fleets in General Santos, estimates the 2007 catch was about 5 percent less than the 400,000 tonnes in 2006, possibly due to global warming.

"The habitation of tuna is in water of 27-29 degrees Centigrade," he said.

"When the weather gets warmer, they go deeper and are more difficult to catch. That is one of the reasons we suspect has contributed to the lower catch because the water is getting warmer and warmer."

But John Heitz, a former US Peace Corps volunteer who classifies fish at the port, said the drop in the catch could be as high as 50 percent and squarely blamed over-fishing.

"People are selling their boats because they cannot find fish," he said, speaking after a day that began at dawn, poking a "classifier's stick" into each tuna, drawing out a sliver of meat and inspecting it for colour.

The highest-grade fish, especially the big-eye tuna, have pale pink flesh, and are treated carefully. With time of the essence, they are immediately packed and flown to Japan or the United States to be used as sashimi, but these are rare.

Most of the catch, largely yellow-fin or skipjack tuna, is used in cooking, processing into frozen products or in the canneries.

The catch at the other wharf, home of the purse seiners, is almost all destined for the canneries and includes many smaller tuna which have not grown fully.

The government is trying to get the purse seiners to enlarge their nets so the younger fish can escape, but this is a lengthy, costly business.

"Purse seining is where the overfishing takes place," Heitz said. "The traditional Philippine single-line fishing is more sustainable, and hopefully, with more awareness among consumers, this will become lucrative."

Governments are trying to control tuna fishing in the equatorial waters of the Pacific, but a meeting of the West and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission on the island of Guam last month ended without any decisions.

The United States and the European Union have regulated the fishing of blue-fin tuna, which is highly endangered, in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Yellow-fin and big-eye tuna fetch lower prices but they are also heading toward depletion, environmentalists have warned.

With the pressures on the catch, the Philippines is looking at other ways to develop its tuna industry.

There are proposals to increase unloading, refrigeration and processing facilities at General Santos, and lure away the "super seiners" that can carry up to 5,000 tonnes of fish in their hold, from Thailand, where they mostly go.

"We are four days closer than Thailand to the Pacific," said Teng, the fishing fleet owner. "This is one industry that the Philippines can excel in, not because of our extra ability but because of our proximity to the fishing grounds." (Reporting by Raju Gopalakrishnan; editing by Roger Crabb)