The exponential increase in fish prices at local markets is due to the lack of supply in waters off Malaysia, according to the National Fishermen’s Association.<\/p>\n
Its chairman Abdul Hamid Bahari told Malay news portal\u00a0Getaran\u00a0that local fishermen estimate a decline of up to 70 per cent in fishes sighted off the seas, especially in the northern part of peninsular Malaysia.<\/p>\n
That is from more than a million tonnes down to about 300,000 tonnes a month.<\/p>\n
Abdul Hamid added this has also the fishermen’s earnings to decrease.<\/p>\n
He was explaining the reason behind the fish price increase. Small-sized mackerel are now sold at between RM12 and RM14 per kilogramme, compared to RM3 to RM4 previously.<\/p>\n
Getaran, the sister publication of English-language daily\u00a0The Vibes, also reported an unnamed source from the Fisheries Department saying that the decline in fishes off Malaysian waters was not a new phenomenon.<\/p>\n
“Actually, this has been happening since 2015 and what is worrying us is that the frequency is decreasing due to the large number of catches every year.<\/p>\n
“This \u2018greed\u2019 has caused it to decrease drastically, especially in the coastal sea, and one of the main factors is unreported and unregulated fishing activities, which is illegal fishing.<\/p>\n
“In fact, some fishermen in zone C took the advantage by fishing in zone A and B, causing it to be out of hand,” the source was quoted saying.<\/p>\n
Getaran\u00a0reported the source did not deny nor elaborate when asked if the decline in fish sighting is due to uncontrolled deep-sea fishing activities around Malaysia.<\/p>\n
Despite a decrease in the number of fishes caught, the Fisheries Department maintains at least a yield of 1,000,000 tonnes each year.<\/p>\n
The agency recorded 1,148,729 tonnes in 2015; 1,195,360 tonnes in 2016; 1,170,270 tonnes in 2017; 1,192,722 tonnes in 2018; 1,192,354 tonnes in 2019 and 1,169,201 tonnes in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":2,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[177],"tags":[9283,2008],"region":[28],"source":[2334],"country":[2043],"state":[],"city":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/94975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/newss"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/94975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94976,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/94975\/revisions\/94976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94975"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=94975"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=94975"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=94975"},{"taxonomy":"state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/state?post=94975"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=94975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}