Hi there
As a private mail went went public, and my name has been invoked, here is my
5 cents contribution, in this topic
(I have not dealt with Mahi Mahi exports, mostly because we eat it or went
to crew catch!)
For longlined fish. The market of most of that fish is either frozen or
fresh sashimi market at various grades. Some of the pacific islands do
longline albacore for canning, but is not a lot and is mostly a day fishery
providing the shore based companies to freeze on site and ship out.
Ergo, if you are going to expect premium price for fish, you provide premium
quality. Temperature abused fish is quite obvious to the trained eye. And if
you sent dodgy fish, histamine levels could be high and you are not going to
stay in the market for too long.
On my experience on board longliners (Tonga, Samoa, Fiji & New Zealand)
quite a lot of the fish come on board alive, unless, as Ian mentioned
before, it has been eaten by sharks... again this varies with species and
locations.
However, if you are investing in longlining you go for the bigger fish 30 kg
+ lower than that, market does not really justify the airfreight costs, and
mostly you'll fish below the thermocline, and depending completely on the
size of your reel, vessels specs, weather, bait, racks and so on... you set
over an X period of time without interruptions and then go back to your
setting point and start hauling... during that time you sleep and eat...
Hauling takes a long time when every thing goes well, and even longer when
things go "normal". (mainline cuts, sabotage, reel problems, to much by
catch, to much fish, slurry problems), but basically the dodgier you are as
a skipper and the associated condition of gear and crew... the dodgier your
fish would be*
And a in that sense the market regulates itself, a good HACCP plan in which
histamine tests (from a registered lab) are used as a verification measure
at regular intervals, should be enough. If you doubt on your suppliers, do
internal verification by colorimetry, test kits, cheap lab services, or
whatever your feel like)
As somebody who worked in both sides of the fence (a fence that we in NZ are
trying to break down), I'm very aware that in the cases where things go
wrong (i.e. rejections, rapid alerts, etc) the CA does get into trouble, and
upholds responsibility... but the producer gets into more trouble.
He looses money big time... and you can do that only a couple of times in
today's marketplace... so is at the end of the day, the system regulates it
self a bit.
For the species that are fished closer to the surface, you tend to aim to
the "bulk" market, where size is not a conditional factor and the most
common method is purse seining (yes I know I'm omitting pole liners, but
just wait..) Again a different ball game all together as the gatekeepers are
the canning factories, who are VERY particular about histamine
Of course... you want to fill the ponds in one shoot if you can* but then
you know that the fish you will be scooping at the end would be quite bad...
and your engineer would be screaming at you and at the overwhelmed
refrigeration system...
again a mistake that you don't make many times... the seiners I worked on
(Solomon Islands and Western Pacific) are really aware of this... and would
go for the day quota that their boats could handle... because ...they don't
get paid for rejected fish.
How big of a problem is Histamine? I guess each of us would have a different
answer.
The better the fish you have access to the less the problematic issue it
would be, the less "serious" your industry the bigger the problem, and if
the importer in the US deals with dodgy producers for a quick buck, again
not many mistakes are allowed*
The worst part of the problem is, I know, that those histamine mistakes can
cost lives, in the worst case scenario. (are they really significant in
today's world of collateral damages?)
But I believe, that more regulatory intervention, paternalistic approaches,
and changing the nature of the fishing methods are not the solution
I don't really know what the solution is, but I'm sure includes education,
extension, fairness, pay per quality schemes, feedback, consultation,
industry agreed standards, RMPs, and other strategies, tools and lines of
work we are into.
Thanks for the patience (we leave pole-lining and set driftnets for another
day!)
Francisco Blaha
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