High market fees imposed on tuna vendors in the Solomon Islands are forcing more fishermen to revisit their coastal fishing grounds.
Vendors warn this has also led to unsustainable tuna fishing in the Western Province of the country.
Photo: Supplied/ the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
The province's Gizo Fish Market is normally restocked with fish daily as people from communities take turn to sell their fish.
This usually makes it easy to control the price of fish at the market.
But tuna vendors want the authorities to explain why they have to pay $US2.51 to sell their catch at the Gizo market while those selling reef fish are charged US62cents.
Tuna vendors said they were concerned because they spend more money and risk their lives to travel out in the open waters to fish.
This has raised a feud among the tuna fish sellers in recent times.
Namu Avo is from the Babanga community, outside Gizo Island. She is a frequent vendor at the Gizo market and one of those who has questioned the fee differences.
Avo said she felt disappointed with how the authorities were charging the fees for fish vendors at the market.
She said the difference of $US1.88 was expensive for tuna vendors, who had put more effort, time and money to fish tuna.
She said sometimes vendors returned with "few tuna, maybe less than 20", and they really needed to sell them out to repay the expenses incurred on the fishing trip.
But they still charged the vendors the same amount of fee and this was unfair, Avo said.
Avo and other tuna vendors at the Gizo market agreed the authorities needed to consider the challenges and expenses they endured to bring fresh tuna to the market.
Avo said many of them had to wake as early as 2am to prepare before heading out to various fish-aggregating devices (FADs) to fish.
tuna on the deck of a Pacific fishing vessel Photo: Giff Johnson
According to Pacnews, Wesley Misu a fisherman and vendor from the Titiana Community outside Gizo, said the trip to reach the FADs could take up to five hours.
Travelling out into the open seas in search of various FAD devices is very difficult and dangerous, and expensive, Misu said.
The weather, he said, could be unpredictable and fishers had to take extra precaution.
Fishermen sometimes had to cancel their fishing trips when there was no fuel or when the weather was severe, Misu said.
Avo also said that fishing was a challenge for tuna fishers as they were not certain their catch would be 'completely sold'.
She said reef fish sellers only took advantage of the reefs and didn't spend much money to fish for tuna as they had exploited the nearby reefs.
Avo said the Gizo Fish Market was supposed to make selling fair to all, so that communities near Gizo could sell their fish each day.
Each market day allowed vendors from two communities, including Titiana, Nusa Baruku, Babanga, and Saeragi, she said.
Avo said as a community, vendors had to take turns to sell their catch at the market.
But she said many vendors at the Gizo market were not unsupportive of this arrangement.
Avo said she had found out that fish vendors at the Noro market were charged $US62cents regardless of being a reef fish or a tuna vendor.
However she said competition was not high at Noro Market as it was at Gizo.
It was lessened because the National Fisheries Development unloaded most of its catch to the SolTuna cannery there, Avo said.
She said at Babanga there were a lot of boats and that nearly all families on the island went out to fish, as it was their only means of survival.
She said the competition at the Gizo market could get high when other fishers or vendors arrived with high fish quantity.
And when they started dropping their prices, others had no option but to do the same, she said.
Avo said there was no understanding between the tuna vendors at the market.
She warned such situations would force fish prices to drop to as low as $US1.25 and this did not cover the expenses incurred to travel out to fish in the open seas.
The present Gizo market Photo: supplied
According to Avo and Misu, this misunderstanding had forced many fishers to resort to fishing in the nearby reefs.
Too much fish was being harvested, so that unsustainable overfishing was occurring in the reefs outside Gizo, Avo said.
Misu said since there was no land available to do gardening, fishing was the villagers' source of income.
He said the money earned from fishing was used to pay for food, children's school fees and other basic necessities.
Misu said when they were not able to fish for tuna in the open seas, vendors had to revisit the local reefs to help sustain our families.
Gizo Town Council clerk Charles Kelly told Pacnews the local council was not responsible for collecting fees from vendors at the market.
Kelly said vendors needed to negotiate with the Gizo market master.
But he said the council was alarmed at the level of overfishing outside Gizo.
Gizo Market Master Moffat Maeta said his office was fully aware of the matter, and that his officers would try and sort out the situation so it was fair to all.
Maeta said the fee collectors were often lenient with reef fish vendors, which resulted in the low fees charged instead of the unstable fees.
He said normally, the fish market fees were charged at $US2.51 across the board for all vendors.
This is clearly stated in the Western Provincial Government Market Ordinance, Maeta said.
He said there were plans to review the market ordinance and the fish market fees.
Maeta said one idea being considered was to reduce the fees charged to tuna vendors and increase the fees for reef fish vendors.
He said this was a way of making fishing on local reefs less viable.
"By imposing high market fees on local fishers who contributed to unsustainable fishing in the nearby reefs, it was projected that they would have no other option but to travel into the open seas to fish.
"This practice would allow local reefs as common fishing grounds to recover from overfishing."