Fishermen off the west coast of Trinidad are making the most of a fish for which there is high demand in China.
Over the past two years, Carli Bay fishermen have been catching cutlassfish, also known as largehead hairtail, “in abundance” in the Gulf of Paria and selling it to middlemen who service suppliers doing business in China and Miami, Florida, U.S.A.
Carli Bay Fishing Association president Stephen Rampersad told SeafoodSource that about 17 boats worked by members of his association have been catching the species, with each boat averaging about 20,000 pounds (about nine metric tons) of catch per month.
The middlemen pay “between TTD 3.50 (US 0.52, EUR 0.44) and TTD 4.00 (US 0.59, EUR 0.51) per pound,” he said. They then take it to the suppliers who ship it to Miami. Suppliers there pay the middlemen between TTD 6.00 (US 0.90, EUR 0.80) and TTD 7.00 (USD 1.00, EUR 0.90), he added.
Rampersad explained that the Carli Bay fishers who catch the cutlass fish are those who work the seine vessels and typically supply the Trinidad market with fish commonly eaten locally, such as carite. Those vessels are normally worked by eight crewmembers.
However, there are some concerns about maintaining the fish for shipping, since the area where the Carli fishers offload does not currently have cold storage facilities.
“The guys walk with ice on board the boat when we catch the fish. They come onshore with the fish and the [middlemen] come with vans and big bins with more ice,” he said. “But we are trying to get some assistance with [a cold storage facility] to improve the process of dealing with the fish.”
Rampersad told SeafoodSource that without proper storage, a boat could lose as much as 200 pounds of cutlass fish for every 4,000 pounds (1.8 metric tons) caught if the middlemen took too long to come, because the stomachs of the fish tend to burst.
“There is added heat even though there is ice, because of the volume,” he said. “The fish underneath will get damaged.”
