SVG looks to tap into US tuna market

According to a “Tuna - December 2015” report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), “for the first time in history, US imports of air-flown fresh tuna were higher than that of Japan and this could become a common feature in the future as well.

On November 1, Japan’s non-resident Ambassador to SVG, Mitsuhiko Okada, visited St Vincent to formally handover US$4.6 million of grant aid. It was given to St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) in the form of cooling equipment for six fisheries facilities, a refrigerator truck and a submerged type Fish Aggregating Device (FAD) to help transform the country’s seafood sector into “a major engine for economic growth and development.” Fisherfolk in SVG regularly catch yellowfin tuna while, according to KFM’s Manager, Dunstan Johnson, “there is an abundance” of conch and lobster in the country’s territorial waters.

Business Day spoke with Johnson recently, while on a tour of the refurbished KFM, about how the facility can fully capitalise on its portion of the grant aid.

“We have dolphin, marlin, king fish, yellowfin tuna...’Red species’ such as snapper, butter fish, hind, grouper (and) we have an abundance of lobster and conch. The problem with St Vincent, I do believe, is the marketing and the consistency of the landed catch; it needs to be more consistent in order to attract the foreign market.” Asked about the demand for yellowfin tuna, Johnson said “unlike Grenada and other countries, SVG has not developed a steady market that we can supply. We will have to carry out a massive re-training, re-education programme because there are certain quality standards that must be met here if we are to get (top dollar) for our yellowfin tuna.” He explained that this includes “processing the fish as soon as it is caught. The pirogues (our fisherfolk) use don’t have the capability to process the fish at sea. We do all of that here for them here at KFM, then the fish is iced up and put in the chill room until it’s sold.” While fisheries facilities across SVG can now process and store fresh and frozen fish more efficiently and for longer periods, thanks to the Japanese grant aid, there remains the issue of illegal fishing in the country’s waters.

Johnson likened SVG’s current ability to harvest its own seafood to “having a gold mine but mining the gold with a spoon. In other words, SVG does not have the resources and equipment to actually take from the sea what others are taking out at present.” He explained that “others” was a reference to trawlers operating illegally in SVG’s waters while the majority of the country’s fisherfolk are still using wooden pirogues.

“The Fisheries Division (of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Transformation, Forestry and Fisheries) has to look at where the resources are and determine how to properly manage them, such that we don’t deplete what we have while (reducing) the number of vessels from other countries coming into our waters,” Johnson stated.

Regarding the upgrades at KFM, one of the market’s ice machines was replaced while nine compressors were repaired. Asked how this has improved things for fisherfolk and vendors at the market, Johnson told Business Day that better quality fish means more potential revenue for KFM’s clients.

“The upgrade that was done to the compressors assisted greatly with the whole refrigeration system. Before, the temperature of the chill rooms would fluctuate between -15 degrees to -18 degrees Celsius when ideally, we want it to remain at -18 degrees Celsius...

Thanks to the Government of Japan, our chill rooms now have a consistency of -18 degrees Celsius,” Johnson said.