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Fishing plight hits Maluku, Jakarta, Bali
Ambon fishing port chief Cholieq Syahid pointed to the Thailand-registered fish transport vessel Marine One, idling in port since a moratorium on the operation of foreign-made ships was put in place in November 2014
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Ambon fishing port chief Cholieq Syahid pointed to the Thailand-registered fish transport vessel Marine One, idling in port since a moratorium on the operation of foreign-made ships was put in place in November 2014.
“Aside from this big ship, and one processing plant over there, nothing much is going on at this port, which used to be busy around the clock, two or three years ago,” said Cholieq.
Before the government launched its massive campaign against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in late 2014, the port, located in Maluku’s capital of Ambon, was a prime creator of jobs and business opportunities.
The port, which houses several fish processing plants and is managed by the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry, was the epicenter of the fisheries business in a city plagued with bloody sectarian conflict less than two decades ago.
However, the anti-IUU campaign — particularly aimed at foreign poachers — has caused a shortage of fish at processing companies not only in Ambon, but also in other fishing centers, such as Bitung in North Sulawesi, Muara Baru in North Jakarta and Bali.
Half of the 20 companies once operating in the port of Ambon have gone insolvent as they failed to source enough fish, according to Cholieq.
“In 2014, the port managed 68,000 tons of fish valued at around Rp 1 trillion [US$77.12 million]. In 2015, it only managed 8,000 tons,” he said, highlighting how hard the industry was hit.
“The 10 companies still operating in this port now just rent out cold storage to fishermen. Only PT Harta Samudra still conducts processing operations, albeit at low capacity,” he said.
Thirty-nine fishing companies and 11 cold storage providers in Ambon have ceased operations following a raft of policies to combat IUU fishing by foreign poachers since late 2014, according to recent research conducted by Bank Indonesia (BI).
The central bank revealed that the closure triggered a 7.5 percent jump in unemployment in Maluku this year.
“The rise [in unemployment] is the result of a decline in business in Maluku since 2015. The province has been impacted by the ministry’s policies,” BI said in a study.
The policies are driving up prices in Maluku and other provinces of eastern Indonesia, causing inflation to soar. Maluku, a backwater province, recorded the country’s highest inflation at 6.15 percent last year due to a shortage in fish supplies, according to BI.
The blanket ban on transshipment — the practice by which a fishing boat transfers its catch at sea to another ship for delivery to land — has been blamed for the shortages, despite Maluku being located near three fishing areas that together account for almost 30 percent of the country’s fish stocks.
The fish processing business in Muara Baru, North Jakarta, is suffering a similar plight.
Strolling through the port and fish processing center of Muara Baru, visitors are greeted by piles of empty fish storage cages, pointing to the low utilization of cold storage space owned by many companies there.
Around 4,000 workers in the center, known for its fillet processing and packaging operations, have been dismissed over the past year due to the shortage of fish, according to the Muara Baru Fishing Companies Union (P3MB), which represents 61 companies operating 1,600 vessels.
The industry now runs at 30 percent of installed capacity, down from 60 percent in 2014.
“From what I can recall, the past two years have been the worse for fish businesses here,” said P3MB chairman Tachmid Widiasto.
“But our plight doesn’t end there. We are now forced to pay higher rents and sign shorter contracts to operate in this industrial zone [operated by state-run fishery company PT Perindo]. The timing just couldn’t be worse,” said Tachmid.
Bali’s fish processing industry is not immune to the shortage of fish. BI indicated that growth in the overall industry grew at a sluggish annual rate of 2 percent in the second quarter of the year as raw material stocks depleted.
Even the tuna processing industry in Bali has taken a hit, with BI saying that several export-oriented processing plants had ceased operations and shifted to catching squid, a major export commodity of the province last year.
