AMSTERDAM: The prolonged cold weather highly scaled down fish catch, causing a huge financial loss to fishermen and exporters as the country’s seafood export has fallen 18.33 percent in February this year.
It was unusual to undergo such a prolonged cold spell this year even fish catch landing has been minimal in March and April,” fish traders said, adding that the low catch landing left the trading dull for over three months this year.
Traders blamed the excessive fishing with banned nets for the fall in seasonal catch. “This has never happened to have low catch in March and April,” Fazal Akbar, a local fish trader, told Business Recorder, saying that the local fish market had been deserted for the last three months for low landing of seafood.
He said that since last November fish landing has been low. “Black Pomfret, Surmai, Giser, Heera, Dhother and some other fish species were very short in the market to sell,” he said, adding that only squid fish and cuttlefish were largely available.
He reckoned at least 70 percent fall had hit the market since last November whereas shrimp landing had almost ended in April. The lean season, despite the weather had turned warmer, continues to persist, he said.
Normally, he said, that every Feb 15 was said to be the last date of cold spell as afterwards the fish landing would begin in normal to bigger amount, but not this time around. “There is a big financial problem, which the fishermen, traders and exporters are facing,” Fazal Akbar said.
He slammed the government for ignoring the implementation of rules to protect the seas from destruction that continues through banned nets that resulted in slumping fish and shrimp catch every year. “Even Balochistan waters are not secured from the destructive fishnets and catch from there is also of low sized,” he added.
The fish trader said that there were a number of fresh seafood exporters, who had defaulted for want of business and locked their offices. The defaulted traders have also lost international contacts, he said, adding that “they have to pay for whatever they had bought on credit in the last transactions”.
