Financial Crisis in Asia Giving Fishermen That Sinking Feeling
Like so many others who scour the seas for high-end delicacies such as urchin and crab, tuna fisher Joseph Meyr has unwittingly been swept into the eye of Asia’s financial tempest.
Three weeks ago, Meyr packed more than 10 tons of plump albacore tuna into the refrigerated hold of his 49-foot schooner, the Aleta. But he can only hope that someone, somewhere, comes up with the cash to purchase the catch so he can turn his attention to more pressing matters, like paying his children’s college tuition.
Paying $30 a day to keep his catch cold, Meyr figures he can hold out another two or three weeks before it becomes impossible to sell.
“I didn’t plan for this at all,” the 57-year-old Ventura resident said. “It’s something that I couldn’t predict and even if I could have, I would have never thought it would come to this.”
With Pacific Rim countries smarting from a series of currency devaluations, bank crises and business failures, fishermen from Seattle to San Diego have seen their overseas markets evaporate.
For tuna boat operators, the financial turmoil has had an additional effect: Their Asian counterparts are flooding the U.S. market with albacore tuna hooked off distant shores.
And that has the local boat operators angry. So angry, that fantastic rumors are circulating about an across-the-board tuna boycott and even a blockade of the Port of Los Angeles in hopes of forcing the canneries to begin purchasing the local catches.
“It would be something different if they were foreign canneries, but these are subsidized by the government, and for them to unilaterally shut out the U.S. fleet is horribly wrong,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of the San Francisco-based Pacific Coast Federation of Commercial Fishermen’s Assns. “This situation is completely intolerable and has to change.”
For the past several months, the Western Fishboat Owners Assn., which represents 600 fishermen from Canada to the Mexican border, has been negotiating with the three largest processing firms of Starkist, Bumblebee and Chicken of the Sea to purchase the tuna at about $1,000 a ton. Last year tuna sold at about $1,600 a ton.
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According to the association’s general manager, Wayne Heikkila, those negotiations have been a frustrating test of patience that fell through again Thursday after he said processors balked at a preliminary agreement.
“It seems like they’re taking advantage of an already desperate situation and that’s really made us livid,” he said. “I think there’s a game being played here to drive the price down even further.”
Canners, who process and can the fish at plants in American Samoa and Puerto Rico, said they are not conspiring to freeze out U.S. fishermen, but that the problem is a result of this year’s tuna glut.
“It’s not a case of choosing one person over another,” said Mike McGowan, a senior executive at Bumblebee Tuna. “There has just been so much fish this year that we and everyone else have had to cut back just to keep some semblance of sanity around here.”
He added that the company is negotiating with U.S. producers to buy tuna and hopes to have an agreement next week.
While numbers for the current year have not been compiled, a preliminary report by the state Department of Fish and Game shows the state’s fleet hauled in more than 7 million pounds of the deep-water fish in 1997, netting fishermen about $5.8 million.
The industry’s shock from Asia’s economic crisis goes far beyond the market for albacore tuna.
Urchin divers, crab trappers and those who fish black cod, halibut and salmon have taken a hit as a result of the region’s financial tumult.
Not only have their once-healthy markets begun to shrink, but prices have fallen to a point where, in some fisheries, it makes better business sense to stay in port.
Urchins, for example, were selling earlier this year for as little as 35 cents a pound--down from normal highs of $1.50 to $2 a pound.
“It’s just not worth it when the price gets that low,” said Doug Walker, an urchin diver and board member of the Ventura County Commercial Fishermen’s Assn. “Even at 50 or 60 cents a pound, you’re just paying wages . . . No one’s walking home with any money.”
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Last year, the state’s legion of divers brought up almost 18 million pounds of red urchin, which earned divers about $15 million.
More than 85% of that catch, said officials at the California Seafood Council, was exported to Japan.
Though no numbers are available, this year’s catch and profits diminished after El Nino reduced the population of urchins, and the economies of export partners such as Japan soured.
The Asian market crash also has hurt halibut fishermen, who have watched the price of the fish drop because of scant demand overseas.
Chris Williams, president of the Ventura County Commercial Fishermen’s Assn., has become fluent in the industry’s hardships. He trolls for halibut off the California coast and said 1998 is a year he and many others would like to forget.
“It’s killing us,” Williams said of Asia’s economic woes. “I personally have gotten the lowest prices I’ve seen in years . . . If this keeps up, the ranks are going to start thinning.”
