Basque Tuna Fishermen Want Better Prices & Quality Labelff

Basque fishermen will try to raise the price for Bonito del Norte in the domestic Spanish fresh market this year.

The Basque coastal fishing sector, which consists of about 230 vessels, considers it a major priority to improve profitability for their fishing activities by increasing the price by at least EUR 0,30 per kilo.

They will also request better and wider quality control, as well as a follow up on the purchases of Bonito del Norte carried out by the canneries to obtain an average price increase of the species.

During 2003, coastal fishing was strongly influenced by the Prestige oil disaster. The fishing campaign was partly lost to picking up black oil instead. Later, during the beginning of the fishing activities, the anchovy and the Bonito del Norte catches were scarce and the prices they obtained were very low.

The tuna fleet from Cantabria only caught 3,500 tons of Bonito del Norte, therefore the lowest levels of the last years, although somewhat better than the figures of 2002. 

Last year’s average price of Bonito del Norte reached 3,8 euros in the market, whereas in the 2001 -with captures of 4,500 tons- prices were positioned at around 5 euros.

The return of low prices became evident when the fleet considered the Bonito del Norte campaign as finalized and it dedicated its efforts to the capture of other species. On November 6th, coastal fishermen decided to dump a 100 tons of Bonito Del Norte back into the sea, because of the lack of buyers and the low prices they were getting.

As a result of all these circumstances, the president of the Guipuzqua Fishermen Federation, Esteban Olaizola, said “we must obtain better prices by establishing a quality label so that the product and the origin of where it is caught is specified on the canned products.”

”Often canned tuna appears in the market with the inscription ‘Bonito del Norte’ when actually the tuna is caught in waters of the Indian and Pacific ocean of worse quality than our landings”. Mr. Olaizola refers to imports into Spain of frozen albacore tuna from Australia, S- Africa and the United States. These imports ensure delivery of the Spanish ‘Bonito Del Norte’ industry year round, when local catches are out-of-season.