APD | Indonesia named world’s largest tuna supplier

By APD writer Aditya Nugraha

JAKARTA, April 9 (APD) — Indonesia is now recognized as world’s largest tuna supplier following strict policies in fishery sector that apparently boosted marine fish production in the last several years, Indonesia Maritime and Fishery minister Susi Pudjiastuti said on Tuesday. 

The increasing fish production was highly contributed by a ban to use of big trawl in national fishing activities. 

Use of big trawl would damage coral reefs, undersea organism and seeds of fishes that would eventually threat marine environment sustainability, the ministers said.

Big trawl, locally known as cantrang, works by netting all things within its super wide net that spread down to the seabed, the habitat of coral reefs.  

Apart from that, the ministry’s strict policy to arrest foreign illegal fishing boats operating in the country also contributed significantly to Indonesia’s fish production records. 

The policy has drastically reduced amount of Indonesian fishes stolen by foreign illegal fishing boats, the minister said. 

Indonesia has drowned the arrested illegal fishing boats after went through legal process in Indonesian courts. 

The move to drown those illegal fishing was intended to give deterrent effect for those intending to dispatch fishing boats illegally and steal fishes from Indonesian waters.

“We could only catch 6.5 million tons of fishes from our waters in 2014. After we drowned those illegal fishing boats, the figure surged to 12.5 million tons in 2016. In 2018 the figure has ascended to over 13 million tons,” Susi said here. 

Indonesia has drowned 488 illegal fishing boats in the last 4 years, among others originated from Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Belize, Papua New Guinea and from Indonesia itself. 

With increasing caught fish figure from the nation’s waters, the minister said that Indonesia now is ranked first in Asian fish trade. Indonesia was also named as world’s largest tuna supplier in the last few weeks, the minister said. 

“Indonesia obtained a label as world’s largest tuna supplier as of two weeks ago from none. We can do it actually,” she said. 

Indonesia’s caught tuna accounted for 16 percent of global production last year with annual catch worth US$ 5 billion, reports said. 

The United States has been largest consumer of Indonesian tuna, took half of Indonesia’s tuna export last year. 

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)