The Chinese Tuna Connection In Trinidad & Tobagoff
11 October 2006
Trinidad & Tobago From the local press: Many will be familiar with the name National Fisheries. A few may know of the company Kwo Jeng, a Taiwanese distant water tuna fishing company that has operations in Trinidad now for some years. And I am sure that fishermen and others will have seen the odd longliner sailing along the NorthCoast or in the Gulf of Paria, an ocean-going fishing vessel of a few hundred tonnes displacement, painted in white with a central superstructure and with characteristic highly flared clipper bows. Indeed, these vessels could easily be confused with Japanese tuna longliners that roamed the Pacific Ocean even before the Second World War. So what are the Taiwanese doing in Trinidad and Tobago?
Let us clear up one thing. Some, including persons in Barbados, allege that the Taiwanese are fishing in our waters. They are not fishing within our territorial seas or Exclusive Economic Zone. The technology employed and the area involved simply would not support the fleet.
The Taiwanese are exploiting tuna stocks in the open Atlantic as well as in the other oceans. Their vessels stay at sea for a few weeks at time and they need a port for servicing of the fleet and transshipment of frozen tuna to canneries.
But Taiwan? Actually long before the Taiwanese arrived Japanese tuna longliners operated from Port of Spain. As early as the mid-1950s Japanese tuna longliners docked at the Port of Spain docks, transshipped their frozen tuna to refrigerated carriers that then transported the fish to canneries in Ponce in Puerto Rico, with the finished product being distributed throughout the US. The vessels spent a few days in port, refueled and re-provisioned and went to sea. The process continued for a few years before the Japanese withdrew, only to be replaced by Korean fleets. I have photographs of one vessel, the Kaiko Maru No 15 alongside the wharf.
And the Chinese connection? A local one, actually. Sidney Lee Lum was in the shipping business and acted for the Japanese fleet. My connection with the Japanese fleet was through Mr. Lee Lum and was simply to inspect a small sample of a few hundred tons of frozen tuna by coring into the fish and confirming that it was actually frozen. The corer also measured temperature. An appropriate certificate was signed either by Walter King-Webster, the senior fisheries officer, or me and the catch transferred to the carrier. The Japanese actually did all the manual work whilst two gangs of stevedores hired for the job actually sat in the shade playing cards. This was in 1955 and 1956.
So that the next time that you purchase a tin of tuna, or drive along Mosquito Creek and see the small trawlers with a single fisherman aboard plying back and forth opposite the creek, remember the tuna trade and otter trawling came to Trinidad through two Chinese Trinidadians.
