NFA focuses on building bech-de-mer sector

By PETER ESILA
MORE than K70 million circulates in the local communities when a beche-de-mer season is open and it is important to ensure both the fishery and the beche-de-mer trade is sustained, says National Fisheries Authority (NFA) chairman, Laurie William.
He was in Kimbe yesterday with the Authority’s board members visiting the Mari Gold Limited l, a commercial sea cucumber and breeding and export facility.
The beche de mer hatchery and farming concept was (something) we have been talking about in the last four years,” he said.
“It is a small industry, but has a big impact on close to a million people in rural communities and when we stop the (harvest), they get impacted economically.
“The only way forward is to start farming so they complement each other. You have wild and farms so we do not necessarily stop the beche-de-mer season.
“It is important that we carefully frame the development plan for this fishery sector,” William said.
He said past fisheries management plan pointed towards food security.
“Now we want to also capture the commercialisation of those sector into the management plan and that will address some of the issues like shutting down because we want to protect the wide resource. This will complement the sustainability of it,” he said.
Mari Gold Ltd managing director Jacky Chen said it’s pilot sea cucumber project had been trialled for three years now.
“We have 21 locations, these are communities that has farms that support us with more than 250,000 sandfish given to farmers already,” Chen said.