Officials complete training on small-scale tuna

THIRTEEN officials from Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands have completed a one-week training small-scale tuna canning operations at Majuro, Marshall Islands.
The Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) said it was the first regional tuna canning training for business and government representatives from members of PNA.
PNA manages multi-billion dollar tuna fishery in the western and central Pacific.
PNA chief executive officer Ludwig Kumoru said the training was to spur island entrepreneurs to develop new businesses and revenue streams from commercial tuna fishery.
“An important goal of last week’s canning training was to empower local entrepreneurs to change the mindset of dependency so they are not scared of starting a business,” he said.
He said it did not take a lot of money to start small-scale tuna canning in the islands. Cooking and canning equipment can be bought for less than US$2000.
Tuna for canning is available free or at low-cost “because of PNA fishing rules that require purse seine fishing boats to retain all fish caught and to transship in ports”.
“This has created large volumes of by-catch unwanted by the commercial tuna companies, but suitable for canning locally,” Kumoru said.
PNA commercial manager Maurice Brownjohn said the small-scale canning equipment was not expensive or large.
“This is canning technology that you can set up and use on a four-by-four-foot table,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be on a large industrial scale.”
Meanwhile, Kumoru hopes to see more trainings.