Source: The News International
Pakistan is losing its hold on the seafood export market with a 21 percent drop in value and more than 20 percent in volume. Pakistan has already lost three major buyers –Japan, the US and the European Union– of its fishery products and doesn’t have many stable and potential export markets to export its seafood products to which can revive its industry which is already in a shambles. Despite the depleting wild fish stocks, hardly any efforts are being made by entrepreneurs or the government to embark on aggressive shrimp and fish farming. The freshwater fish which is being farmed is not enough even to meet the domestic demand.
It’s time the authorities woke up and addressed the long-unattended problems of the seafood industry to bring it on a par with India and Bangladesh. Pakistan’s seafood is imported by the existing buyers only as filler, when their factories or stocks run dry due to failure of input from India or Bangladesh. Moreover, Pakistan’s seafood is not getting the same price as these countries which sell their products at a high premium. Our seafood industry can only survive if serious attention is paid to its problems and immediate necessary steps are taken to reform it.
Posted by: Mazhar Butt, Karachi
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It is unfortunate that the marine resources of Pakistan are being pillaged by smugglers and nothing is being done to stop this pillage. The highly prized tuna is being smuggled to Iran. Yellow-fin tuna, which is valued as ‘the beefsteak of the sea’, continues to be fished indiscriminately and smuggled out to Iran where it is smoked or canned and sold as a healthy substitute for beef. Shoals of yellow-fin tuna, or dhawwan, as it is called locally, occur along the Makran coast.
They rank next to blue-fin tuna and albacore, which is also eaten raw as a delicacy in Japan as sashimi or sushi. It is a pity that our tuna, sharks and other fish are being smuggled out due to lack of good fishery management and control. Our sea is being exhausted of its valuable fishery stocks so alarmingly that the government must take some effective measures to stop this.
Posted by: A resident, Karachi