While I started to write this blog NZ’s Prime Minister just announced we go to level 4 response for COVID19 which pretty much means quarantine at home with minimal to no social interactions.
can you all be at 1 .5 mt from each other?
And while the fact that I cannot travel has already impacted my livelihood, it has a massive impact on the tuna organizations I work with (FFA, SPC, WCPFC, NZ MFAT) etc
An interesting question to explore is what happens with the Tuna industry itself? Reality is that no one really knows, as this is new territory… we have not had anything at this level ever before..
So I’m going to elucubrate based on my understanding of the industry. Lets start with the easy scenario:
Sashimi from longlining
The tropical longline fishery typically consists of large-scale distant water vessels fishing between 20ºN-20ºS, which target bigeye and yellowfin for sashimi markets, with smaller volumes of incidentally-caught albacore. Vessels operating in the southern longline fishery are typically smaller (<100GT) and target albacore for canning markets in sub-tropical waters below 10ºS and have small volumes of incidental bigeye and yellowfin by-catch.
The freezer longliners can also be sub-divided between those that have ultra-low temperature freezing (ULT) capability at -60°C and those that have -35 to -40°C freezing capacity, with the former commanding a price premium. Fresh small-scale longliners principally supply the Japan sashimi market.
All what is fresh for airfreight went downhill fast, as it uses in most cases excess capacity on commercial flights, and these are diminishing left right and centre. So unless you have charter flights picking up your fish or designated cargo planes… that segment of the industry will be the hardest hit. This segment is small in volumes, but big in value!
So far all operators are outing their efforts on the frozen markets as carriers and containers will keep operating. Yet -60°C and -35 to -40°C containers are expensive and require good logistics.
Furthemore, around 80% of the sashimi market in Japan is frozen tuna and 20% fresh, with imports comprising 60% of total supply. While the majority of sashimi supply comes from longline vessels, catches from pole-and-line and purse seine vessels with ULT freezer capability are also utilized. The bulk of frozen catch (70-80%) is sold outside the auction system to trading companies and processors. Japan typically relies on about 10-15,000 mt per month of imported, mostly frozen, tuna. China and South Korea have considerable sashimi-grade processing capability, with much of their frozen processed product also exported to Japan.
So the key here is how the COVID 19 crisis affects japan? And we don't really know that.
Loined / Canned / Pouched from Purseiners
One assumes that being all frozen, there are little impact on fisheries operations, vessels come to port only to unload and tranship and there are many measures to limit human interaction. Most of the resupply is done with carriers and bunkers with little human interaction.
But there are issues at this level (and I’ll come back to them), yet the main issues are at the other end, at the demand side. People panic buy shelf stable food, and tuna is a tested and trusted choice, not that I’ve seen it in NZ but I hear that tuna cans and pouches shelfs in the developed world are been emptied fast, this of course means that brands put more orders and that rise demand (and prices which in principle is good for fishers)
Now the fragile point in the value chain for me is processing… tuna is really labour intensive, you need lots of people to process tuna… that is the reason why the canning countries are mostly countries with cheap labour – Thailand, Ecuador, Vietnam etc… Even in the most developed countries that have the most automatized production lines (i.e. Italy, Spain, France) you still need quite a few well-trained people to run those fancy machines and retorts.
Processing is then pushed for products, yet on the other side factories are really wet environment, and while as much as personnel hygiene has improved in the last decades the I see two problems arising that will impact production:
the requirements of “personal distancing” in between people in the workplace 1 or 2 meters in between people? Processing lines are normally elbow to elbow… so if you have less people that means less production.
people working in processing will get sick, and put in quarantine or self-isolation, and by tracing the people that work with them, so absenteeism will be increased… and if you have less people that means less production.
And as the tuna value chain is not really tuned… you’ll have more fish caught and waiting to be processed that the quantities been able to be processed, so coolstores will be full, carriers can’t unload and liberate space, vessels will be full and waiting at transhipment ports like last year in May… therefore prices will go down and fishers will get paid less…
But then there is also a more complex issue… purseiners in the WCPFC cannot fish without an observer on board. Yet unless you have license for the country where you fish and come to tranship after departing the same port, you may need to pick up or leave an observer from a country that is not from the port state… so that observer has to fly to or from there… key transhipment countries such as RMI, Kiribati and Tuvalu have literally closed their borders and no flights are serving them… so how the observer will get there or come back from there?
On the other side even if we assume we can use port state observers… as a captain I will have certain fears to get a guy that is have no assurances of health on board for a 2 to 4 week trip, while at the same time saying: “Hey I have a license, vessels days and the contracts for fish… is not my problem that you cannot guarantee me and observer”
In term of PSM I can also imagine reticence to get inspectors on board, or for inspectors to go on board…
So what are the options to suspend fishing, while market demand is soaring? Leave thousands of people without work (and potentially without food?), or risk the advances we have made in compliance via observers and PSM in the region…
I’m not going to go on the geopolitical implications of all this, since that is a blog on itself… but just think that the DWFN are all countries with high populations - think how many people live in between China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Spain, France, etc. – they all have experiences famine at some stage in the last 100 years… for them food is stability… take food out and serious social crisis will loom… how much are they willing to do as to assure that tuna (that is mostly owned by very small and undeveloped countries) don't get on their way? Having grown up in South America, and seen the carnage that colonial powers and then the US did with the Global Monroe Doctrine and the Clark Memorandum for the resources of the countries there… This is the kind of shit that really scares me
Anyway… even if we keep it at fisheries operational levels only … reality is that I don't really know how things are going to pan out… definitely uncertain times for the industry
As for me? I’m sure I cannot travel till end of May or June, and while I have a certain number of tasks I can do from home and via remote conferencing… the bulk of my work is operational… so my livelihood will be compromised with time (so if you have something you think I can do from home -strategy, research, policy, etc.) – let me know!