The Hindu Business Line : `Tuna fishing potential yet to be tapped'

The Chairman of the Marine Products Export Development Authority, Mr G. Mohan Kumar, and the Regional President of the Seafood Exporters' Association of India, Mr Anwar Hashim, at a workshop on value-added tuna products in Kochi on Friday.— H.Vibhu

Kochi , Nov. 12

WHY do we have plenty of tuna swimming about in the Indian Ocean?

They all have migrated from the Pacific, knowing well that they will never be caught here!

When the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) Chairman, Mr Mohan Kumar, cracked this joke at a workshop on value added tuna products here, he aptly highlighted two aspects: India has tremendous potential to export tuna; and we are yet to tap that resource.

"We have to start right from the scratch. It is an unexploited source," Mr Kumar said.

The Indian Ocean is a vast resource of tuna, just as much as the Atlantic and Pacific are.

However, the Indian seafood exporting industry has not yet focussed on the huge and growing potential of tuna.

Globally, tuna has a $9 billion market with Japan, the US, France, Spain, Italy and West Germany consuming a variety of products such as dried and smoked tuna, burgers, sausage and stock.

In fact, canned tuna makes up for over 20 per cent of the US seafood intake.

India's annual tuna landing was only 35,721 tonnes in 2002, down from 45,167 tonnes in 2000.

As per the MPEDA's statistics, India exported 6,137 tonnes of tuna products in 2003-04, as compared with 3,928 tonnes in the previous fiscal.

Though the annual growth was healthy, it's way below the potential out of the two-lakh tonnes of landings possible for the country.

Since tuna is a low-value, high-volume item, the catch must be improved, if India wants to make a mark in the global market. Raw tuna is sold at 95 cents to $1 a kg while the fillets fetch $3-4 a kg, an exporter said.

Mr Kumar said MPEDA was working on a scheme to improve the landings. One plan is to provide assistance to covert normal shrimp trawlers to vessels suitable for catching tuna and preserve them on-board.

The nature of tuna makes it essential that it is chilled quickly after being caught, lest its quality would degenerate. Vessels need to have adequate facility on board to freeze the catch.

"There is hardly any (vessel for tuna fishing)," Mr Kumar said.

MPEDA is also trying to encourage fishermen to take to a fishing technique called `longlining.'

"You get good tuna by this method. We are now trying to encourage this in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala," he said.