I had to remember the book “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, while I tried to find a title to this blog entry!
I was asked quite a few times for my opinion on the topic… yet the 1st thing that question yourself when asked about the impacts of COVID 19 in the Tuna fisheries is where to start? We have not had anything at this level ever before.
My friend and colleague “Slota” in Rabaul, working under the “new normal”
So I go back to my default setting, the one I understand the world from… and I see the tuna fisheries world not too different from the way I see fishing boats. Yet, fishing operations are very choreographed, there are many specific manoeuvring routines around each fishing day that need to be strictly followed for things to work, everyone has a job to do in sequential order and has to be done right, while being aware of the weather, swell, gear design, manoeuvring mistakes, etc Most of the times, things work alright, but sometimes they don’t and need to be fixed.
Since in this case, COVID19 came quite fast, there were no manoeuvring routines prpeared and a lot had to be improvised, and surely while many things will come ok, but is undoubtful that some will not
In a boat, we have the bridge operations, deck operations, engine and refrigeration operations. Each of them is, to a certain extent a different “world”. Still, they act in synchronicity with each other. In the Tuna fishery, I see (and operate) in 4 different “worlds”: the office/policy, the boats, the wharf and the factories/markets. (There is also the political/diplomatic one too, but that one is way above my head, so I don't touch it). So, ill discuss the impact by parts
Offices:
The office/policy worlds are made of an annually well lined up series of meetings on various topics around the regional organisations (FFA, SPC, PNA, WCPFC and others). It’s in these meetings were policies get formulated, advice is provided and discussed, scenarios evaluated and so on. All this take place along culturally established sit-downs, negotiating agreements, face to face discussions, trust-based consensus building and so on, and being the Pacific, all is well framed by sharing food, drinks and stories.
With COVID, that well-oiled routine built up for many years has disappeared. The travel ban took all that away and now it’s all based on virtual meetings, and the simple fact is that we all needed to learn a new “way to do things” without much preparation and very variable quality of internet, which make some of these meetings very frustrating.
I’m sure that while some advances will be made, the region will struggle to agree on some negotiations on contentious matters. And the reality is that we don’t know when this will change. Many countries have closed their borders, and the regional travel hubs we need to go to meetings (like Nadi, Auckland, Brisbane and Honolulu) are far from being accessible.
Fishing Vessels
Longliners
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 and then fresh small-scale longliners, all of them supply mostly the Japan sashimi market.
All what is sent fresh via airfreight went downhill fast, as it uses in most cases excess capacity on commercial flights. So unless you have charter flights picking up your fish or designated cargo planes, or you have airlines that do cargo and not only as passengers, that segment of the industry is the hardest hit. While this segment is small in volumes, is significant in value, and unfortunately is one of the few that have pacific island domestic investments.
Since 80% of the sashimi market in Japan is frozen tuna, the rest of the operators are pointing their efforts on the frozen markets as carriers and containers will keep operating. Yet -60°C and -35 to -40°C Ultra-low temperature containers are expensive and require excellent logistics to be mobilised, and that capacity is not in all ports.
The bulk of frozen catch (70-80%) imported in Japan is sold outside the auction system to trading companies and processors. China and South Korea have considerable sashimi-grade processing capability, with much of their frozen processed product also exported to Japan.
Furthermore, Japan was storing a lot of frozen tuna for the Olympics that were to start un July. With the delay of a year, surely prices will go down as expected demand is not there and importers need to do their numbers on how much will it cost to keep the fish frozen for another year. I cannot see the sector recovering soon.
Purse Seiners
One assumes that being all frozen fish, there is 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 of food and fuel to Purse seiners is done from carriers and bunkers with little human interaction. Stopping fishing wasn’t an option since as we will discuss further below, demand has soared
But then there is also a more complex issue, purse Seiners require 100% observer coverage and is not happening. Ideally one could have asked the vessels to not change crew on two weeks before coming to port and only take observers from the four main ports in the regions that are all COVID19 free (RMI, FSM, Kiribati and Tuvalu) and come back to the same port. Those countries have closed their borders, and no flights are serving the, one could have recirculated the observers from those ports only, but that option was not pursued.
This has various impacts. The 1st is that there are around 600 active observers in the region that are now out of work and income, this also extends to the transhipment monitors that are generally on-board during transhipment, and this is a harsh reality for observers in many countries in the region as it is their main source of income.
The 2nd one is that the lack of monitoring by observers will impact not only the issue of compliance (as electronic monitoring - cameras- have not been rolled out through the fleet , even if all PS have these days their own CCTV system) but also the already low data flow of biological sampling done on board that need to be used for fisheries science purposes.
Which bring us to the 3rd issue that is the verifiability of some of the MSC certification in the pacific that based on FAD free sets and compartmentalisation (i.e. separation in the storage of FAD associated and non-FAD associated fish) caught on board was done by observers. It seems that some MSC units of certification will continue based on the Chain of Custody requirements that come along with the fishery certification, but with no (or very limited) external oversight by observers or monitors during transhipment, this, of course, is not ideal as all information would be taken on face value only
Of course, this also is going to intersect with compliance issues from July onwards when FAD closure starts for three months, and while is possible via VMS manoeuvring analysis and catch composition to assess if a set was FAD associated or not, the dissuasive effect of having an observer cannot be replicated.
A further interesting further plot here is present availability of very cheap fuel at the moment. Usually, FAD free fishing implies a much biggest fuel bill, as you have to find and chase fish, instead of just go straight to the next FAD sonar buoy, that is already telling you exactly how much fish is underneath. Hence, in principle this should facilitate FAD free fish and more risk-taking by vessels in finding schools, yet without observers, it will be much harder to monitors and verify.
Michael ain’t going to a hospital… even if he is a frontline worker
In the region’s ports the situation is not easier either. The distribution of transhipments in the region moved from the traditional model of convenience and services to one where ports have undergone different degrees shutdown or temporary measures in the last two months or so. Each port has their own ways to deal with vessels, which impacts port operations. Those involved in the logistics of landing and transhipments need to follow the port situation on a day to day basis waiting for news that a particular carrier may enter a specific port and try to continue transhipment as normal. Hence the whole process is quite inefficient, and inefficiencies mean cost and money in tuna, the industry would have welcomed a more standardised approach among the main transhipment countries as they are all PNA/FFA members/
From the fisheries and boarding officers side, the whole process of incoming clearance for vessels has gotten substantially more complex in particularly for those countries like RMI who are applying Post State Measures best practices, in particular pre-arrival intelligence analysis… for example, if a PS vessel wants to come in, they have to track its fishing routes back to January 1. If it bunkered or came alongside any vessel during the current trip then they have to track the routes of those vessels back to Jan 1 as well. If compliances issues are found, the whole dynamic of inspection onboard has changed, as boarding officers will need to get the bridge or engine room to collect evidence, under really logistically complex situations, as all human contact is avoided who you are going to interrogate for evidence.
This situation is better exemplified by the words of one of my colleagues:
“The biggest worry is that there are no fisheries officers physically present in the entire fisheries operation anymore. A vessel can literally catch 1,000 silky sharks, not report them, tranship them to a carrier and it will all go unseen, very very easily (just an example but I do not at all believe this is going on). As a boarding officer as well, it feels really weird not showing a presence by going on these vessels and just checking them. Yet they are fishing in our waters and transhipping in our lagoon. I understand the situation and the importance of the economic benefit to our country by allowing the operation to continue as best as we can, but as a boarding officer, it's like an itch on your back you can't reach.”
Factories / Market
People panicked to buy shelf-stable food, and tuna is a tested and trusted choice, I heard that tuna cans and pouches shelf in the developed world were emptied fast, this, of course, means that brands put more orders and that rises demand.
Now the fragile point in the value chain for me is processing as 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, 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 fewer 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.
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. As consequence carriers can’t unload and liberate space, PS will be full and waiting at transhipment ports (like last year in May when we had 38 PS in Majuro) therefore prices will go down and fishers will get paid less
For factories in the pacific region, the situation is a bit different as other than PNG there has not been COVID cases, yet they have increased distancing and in and out controls which in turn does affect production.
For example Kiribati, KFL operates at around 5o% in the month of April and only frozen and expected to further reduce its operation if the lockdown continues. PNG is back to about 80% capacity (industry), Solomon has scaled down on the workers and continue to process and export to EU, but low supply has affected them. In Fiji, Yellowfin longliner based companies are barely operating, while frozen albacore loining (Viti Foods and Pafco) are experiencing increased demand on their products and have been operating on 6 days per week....
The challenge is lack of raw materials is varied for different segments of the industry, biut the big question is will we get back (and when) to “normalcy”?
A further area of complications is documentation, as many markets require originals in paper of Bill of Lading, Health and Catch certificates, business documents etc. as there are no income and outgoing flights, courier companies are not operating and those documents cannot leave, yet on the market side, import clearing officers (that already have problems knowing where some pacific countries are), seem to not believe that some pacific island countries are literally close to all flights.
Finally… as they say: from crisis opportunities arise and we have learned that:
while sometimes frustrating, technology has enabled us to have meetings and discussions globally without the need for more carbon footprinting - a lesson learned on what is "essential" travel
Improved Communication is needed, the fishing business revolves around the RFMO and regional organizations framework, in times of crisis it shows the inefficiencies which may be improved between all members. (e.g. establishing practical requirements on observer coverage, port entries and transhipments)
Improved medical support/infrastructure for the island nations. Key to the port restrictions was that PICs simply did not have the resources or even available medical facilities to deal with a single case of transmission, therefore, forcing the country to take drastic measures against vessels entering their port, while at the same time these vessels are the basis of their national income.
In conclusion, we are not discussing what is impacted or not, we are discussing the differential extent of the impact in the different areas. Furthermore, people are trying to assess (with very limited tools) the impacts around the areas we can’t really see yet.
If it helps as anecdotal evidence, I have never in my life finished so many meetings (albeit being all online) with the words: “well… let’s see what happen”… and that can’t be good in the long term.