Solomon Islands vendors warn high market fees forcing fishermen to the reef
April 07,2021
| Source:
RNZ
High market fees imposed on tuna vendors in the Solomon Islands are forcing more fishermen to revisit their coastal fishing grounds.
Vendors warn this has also led to unsustainable tuna fishing in the Western Province of the country.
The province's Gizo Fish Market is normally restocked with fish daily as people from communities take turn to sell their fish.
This usually makes it easy to control the price of fish at the market.
But tuna vendors want the authorities to explain why they have to pay $US2.51 to sell their catch at the Gizo market while those selling reef fish are charged US62cents.
Tuna vendors said they were concerned because they spend more money and risk their lives to travel out in the open waters to fish.
This has raised a feud among the tuna fish sellers in recent times.
Namu Avo is from the Babanga community, outside Gizo Island. She is a frequent vendor at the Gizo market and one of those who has questioned the fee differences.
Avo said she felt disappointed with how the authorities were charging the fees for fish vendors at the market.
She said the difference of $US1.88 was expensive for tuna vendors, who had put more effort, time and money to fish tuna.
She said sometimes vendors returned with "few tuna, maybe less than 20", and they really needed to sell them out to repay the expenses incurred on the fishing trip.
But they still charged the vendors the same amount of fee and this was unfair, Avo said.
Avo and other tuna vendors at the Gizo market agreed the authorities needed to consider the challenges and expenses they endured to bring fresh tuna to the market.
Avo said many of them had to wake as early as 2am to prepare before heading out to various fish-aggregating devices (FADs) to fish.
According to Pacnews, Wesley Misu a fisherman and vendor from the Titiana Community outside Gizo, said the trip to reach the FADs could take up to five hours.
Travelling out into the open seas in search of various FAD devices is very difficult and dangerous, and expensive, Misu said.
The weather, he said, could be unpredictable and fishers had to take extra precaution.
Fishermen sometimes had to cancel their fishing trips when there was no fuel or when the weather was severe, Misu said.
Avo also said that fishing was a challenge for tuna fishers as they were not certain their catch would be 'completely sold'.
She said reef fish sellers only took advantage of the reefs and didn't spend much money to fish for tuna as they had exploited the nearby reefs.
Avo said the Gizo Fish Market was supposed to make selling fair to all, so that communities near Gizo could sell their fish each day.
Each market day allowed vendors from two communities, including Titiana, Nusa Baruku, Babanga, and Saeragi, she said.
Avo said as a community, vendors had to take turns to sell their catch at the market.
But she said many vendors at the Gizo market were not unsupportive of this arrangement.
Avo said she had found out that fish vendors at the Noro market were charged $US62cents regardless of being a reef fish or a tuna vendor.
However she said competition was not high at Noro Market as it was at Gizo.
It was lessened because the National Fisheries Development unloaded most of its catch to the SolTuna cannery there, Avo said.
She said at Babanga there were a lot of boats and that nearly all families on the island went out to fish, as it was their only means of survival.
She said the competition at the Gizo market could get high when other fishers or vendors arrived with high fish quantity.
And when they started dropping their prices, others had no option but to do the same, she said.
Avo said there was no understanding between the tuna vendors at the market.
She warned such situations would force fish prices to drop to as low as $US1.25 and this did not cover the expenses incurred to travel out to fish in the open seas.
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