In olden time fishermen at General Santos city used to haul tunas in big numbers but now the catch has dropped right off. Now the number of tuna is very less which si cleaned and sent to processing plant to be frozen, packed or canned before being shipped across the world. Reasons behind such fall in catch are many, among them changing water temperatures that mean fewer tuna traverse these seas on their migration routes, and volatile crude oil prices are the major ones.
Experts believe that the main culprit is a massive slowdown in demand from the crisis-hit US, which used to account for more than 50 percent of General Santos’s tuna market. It is fact that General Santos, often referred to as the tuna capital of the Philippines, is deep in tough times. The yellowfin tuna is found in deep parts of the Pacific Ocean, as well as in the Moro Gulf and Celebes Sea straddling the border of the Philippines and Indonesia.
The city also has some major tuna canning factories, with an average daily capacity of about 750 tons for both the local and export markets. Rosy Barinan, who supervises port operations for the Philippine Cinmic Industrial Corp., said that if there is no tuna, there will be no food, no jobs, no money to send our children to school.
City mayor Pedro Acharon told that the local government has held crisis meetings with the major tuna fishing associations and canneries in an effort to avert economic disaster. He also said that production lines were affected when the demand slowed down. The factories cannot produce and produce without any outlets. There were some downsizing of workers, and reduction of manpower shifts, informed Acharon.
