Pakistani fishermen smuggle $200m Tuna fish to Iran annually

KARACHI: Around 70,000 metric tons of tuna fish is caught by Pakistani fishermen annually but unfortunately, the entire stock is smuggled to Iran where it is processed and exported to other countries, to the disadvantage of the Pakistani exchequer that does not even get a penny from the catch.

“Pakistan can earn at least $ 200 million from the exports of the processed tuna fish annually but that is not possible without proper data and management of the fisheries,” said Dr. Moazzam Khan, technical advisor of WWF-Pakistan while speaking at an international workshop on marine fisheries on Tuesday.

The three-day international workshop on “Data Collection for Tuna Fisheries in the Indian Ocean”, is jointly organized by WWF-Pakistan and Marine Fisheries department of GoP, in collaboration with the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) under its Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) project. Experts from Kenya, Mozambique, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Iran are attending the conference to discuss improving data collection and management of fisheries, especially Tuna catch in the Indian Ocean. Around 20 percent of the world tuna fish production amounting to one million metric tons, comes from the Indian Ocean region, experts said and added that to better manage the tuna stocks, the fisheries data need to be standardized by regional countries. They proposed establishing and strengthening national observer programs by the regional countries and called for using modern instruments like the Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), E-Logbooks, and Electronic Monitoring Systems (EMS).

The experts maintained that the observer data is vitally important for the fisheries management providing an independent source of detailed and high quality information on fishing activities and catches.

Speaking on the occasion, Muhammad Moazzam Khan said Pakistan has a substantially large fleet catching about 70,000 metric tons of tuna, which can be a major source of export for the country, which is not properly handled and processed in Pakistan. Considering the shortcomings in the data collection, he said, the WWF-Pakistan has initiated an important program of collecting information through fishermen. “This Crew-Based Observer Program initiated by WWF-Pakistan has acclaimed international recognition.