The fish-processing companies in Bitung, North Sulawesi, Ambon, Maluku, and Muara Baru, North Jakarta, have seen a steep decline in operations with no recovery in sight after the government issued in November 2014 far-reaching policies to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities, primarily against foreign poachers. No companies, even compliant ones, have been spared from pain. The Jakarta Post’s Rendi A. Witular has explored business conditions in these areas. This is the second of two reports.

For the first time in more than a decade, fisherman Eki Mokodongan, 52, can now earn disposable income to be spent on renovating his modest wooden house on the shores of Girian Beach in Bitung.

For the past year, fish catches have more than doubled and he no longer needs to spend a long time and sail farther from home simply to fill his boat with fish.

“From what I can recall, it was not until the crackdown on foreign poachers last year that we could easily get the fish,” said Eki pointing to a dozen confiscated Philippine vessels seen from afar docked idly at a nearby port.

Small fishermen like Eki have been the immediate beneficiaries of the successful fight against poachers, as spearheaded by Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti. The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) has indicated a jump in fishermen’s welfare (NTN), with the highest being recorded in Bitung.

But Eki’s contentment is not shared by his peers, the blue-collar workers in the nearby fish processing plants of Bitung. Empty cold storage rooms and idle fishing ships are apparent everywhere.

Around 10,000 workers, mostly from nearby Gorontalo and South Sulawesi provinces, have been dismissed in Bitung alone in the past year, according to North Sulawesi’s Association of Fish Processing Units (AUPI).

A set of policies aimed at cracking down on poachers, but which also inflicted collateral damage on many local law-abiding companies, have caused difficulties for the industry in Bitung in sourcing their raw materials, which are now being supplied only by small fishermen.

Fishing vessels weighing more than 30 gross tons (GT), which usually sell their catches to the industry, cannot fish efficiently as the government has limited the use of transportation vessels in transshipment — the practice by which a fishing boat transfers its catch in the middle of the sea to another ship for delivery to land. Supply to the industry has been interrupted ever since.

Bitung, an hour’s drive from North Sulawesi’s capital Manado, is home to 54 fish-processing units (UPIs), one has recently shut down, with a combined capacity to process a 1,400 tons of fish per day.

The city of around 175,000 people is home to the country’s biggest fish-processing industry; half of the nation’s 14 canned tuna facilities are located in Bitung, which is also notorious for as an IUU-fishing hot spot.

However, Bitung has actually never seen its heyday since then president Soeharto planned for the city to become the center of the fish-processing industry in the 1980s.

The industry’s overall operations have never exceeded 54 percent of its installed capacity due to rampant IUU-fishing that saw catches from the surrounding seas illegally shipped to General Santos, a nearby fisheries center in the southern Philippines, dubbed the region’s tuna capital.

Hope once abounded that the ongoing and expansive crackdown on poaching would eventually benefit Bitung and weaken General Santos as more fish was expected to flow into Bitung. But that was merely in theory.

While General Santos has seen production increase in the first half of the year by 25 percent compared to the same period last year, Bitung has been left high and dry.

Today, the industry in Bitung is running at 9.7 percent of its capacity, down from more than 50 percent in 2014, according to the Bitung Fisheries Agency.

“More than two years ago, Bitung used to supply raw material to the processing industry in Muara Baru [Jakarta] and Bali. Now it’s the other way around. We now even have to import from India and South Korea to stay afloat,” said AUPI chairman Basmi Said.

Basmi’s company, PT Delta Pasific Indotuna, was forced to import tuna from India and South Korea in January after a Middle East buyer slapped hefty financial penalties and threatened to break their contract following the firm’s failure to deliver on schedule.

“Even when poaching is rampant with most of the fish being shipped overseas, the industry could still survive. But now by running at around 9 percent of capacity, the industry is in sudden death,” said Basmi.

The industry’s plight is not an empty claim. Bank Indonesia’s (BI) recent research on the regional economy blamed the anti-IUU fishing policies for contributing to the decline in the economic growth of North Sulawesi last year and in the first two quarters of this year.

BI said that although the relaxation in transshipment policies had increased growth in the fisheries sector in the second quarter of the year, it had yet to boost growth in the processing industry, which saw a contraction of 1.23 percent.

“In fish-processing activities, several companies have sourced their raw material from Java and from imports,” said BI in its research.

Fishing and the fish-processing business, with an emphasis on exports, in North Sulawesi have long served as the backbone of growth for the province, according to BI data.

Exports from the province have remained within negative territory since the first quarter of 2015, with the steepest decline occurring in the fourth quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of this year with a more than 20 percent plunge as the industry struggled to source raw material amid abundant untapped resources in nearby seas.

Despite these facts, the ministry has insisted the raw material shortages in Bitung are an isolated case as they have not occurred in other provinces.

“We have to verify the confirmed orders in this area because we are suspicious that the problem has only occurred in specific places but it is being blown up as though it is a national-level problem,” said the ministry’s acting director general of fishing, Zulficar Mochtar.

Zulficar argued the industry in Bitung had long been accustomed to the supply of fish from big foreign-made vessels and was reluctant to adjust to a new mechanism of partnering with small fishermen for its raw materials.

But partnering with small fishermen like Eki may be complicated and need some time. “Why should I go to the sea more often now if I can earn around Rp 5 to 7 million [around US$500] a month?”, said Eki.

It may be a massive task for the government to encourage Eki and other small fishermen to meet the industry’s demand, which needs a continuous supply of fish with sustained quantity and quality.

“It may take years for small fishermen to adjust to the industry’s demand. It is just not in their class,” Bitung Fisheries Agency chief Liesje Jeane said.

Liesje argued that the anti-IUU policies have indeed benefitted small fishermen, but the central government should not ignore the fact that the industry, which provided revenue to the city and employed thousands of workers, was on the verge of vanishing.

“There should be a fair solution between empowering small fishermen and nurturing the industry, without of course compromising sustainability,” she said.

“But no solution seems ever to be in sight because the ministry has ignored the severe problems plaguing the industry.”