Minister to open regional fisheries confab

Ridma Dissanayake

A regional fisheries project of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of Rome will be launched in Sri Lanka shortly. The two-year, five-country project entitled "On board handling and sustainable market development of longline caught tuna" is to be launched today by Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Minister Dr.Rajitha Senaratne at the Eden Hotel in Beruwala.

The five countries are India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The project co-organized by INFOFISH, Malaysia will support the development of longline fishery in the country by providing training and technical know-how on improved on-board and onshore handling of tuna and other long line caught fish.

This project will also provide training in product and market diversification and quality and safety assurance of longline caught fish. At present tuna account for the bulk of seafood exports from the country valued at US $ 190 million.

Sri Lanka is the main supplier of fresh Tuna to the European market. The Fisheries Ministry wishes to further diversify the export markets for tuna with emphasis on Japanese, US and Chinese markets.

The minister also tabled an amendment to the CFC Act in Parliament recently to enable further expansion of longline fishery capabilities of the country through a joint venture partnership of the Ceylon Fisheries Corporation (CFC) with a Saudi partner company.

With the issues related to tuna resource sustainability coming to the forefront, the ministry also plans to ensure accountability of its tuna landings and to avoid any illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

This will be achieved through the planned implementation of a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), introduction of a log book system for all 3,400 or so multi-day boats and employment of other port state measures to strengthen Monitoring Control and Surveillance (MCS) activities.

According to the Fisheries Ministry Adviser Dr.Subasinghe in addition to the training programmes in on-board handling to be conducted in Beruwala and Negombo in next week for multi-day boat owners and operators, the two year project will also have more activities lined up for Sri Lanka.

These include hands on training in tuna value addition, processing and packaging, waste utilization, quality and safety assurance, certification and branding, documentation.

The workshop programme will be conducted by the FAO experts Fransisco Blaha and Prof. Karunasagar Iddaya in association with national experts from the Fisheries Ministry, Fisheries Department and National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA).