Youths trained to farm, harvest quality mud crabs for export

A SMALL business in seafood marketing has engaged 21 youths from South Fly in a two-day training on mud crab fattening at Paho Island near Mabadaun in Western.
Grankle Seafood Marketing (GCM) managing director Bernard Magaru said the training was purposely to impart skills and assist locals to farm and harvest their resources, in this case crabs, to produce a quality product.
“There is a huge market for mud crabs out there and Papua New Guinea is exporting it without giving back to the people.
“There is so much talk on SMEs (small to medium enterprises) but we must also provide the skills necessary for our people to do what we expect from them,” Magaru said.
He said teaching locals to grow export quality mud crabs would only improve their earning potential and give them skills to use in other ventures.
The training covers skills on catching crab for farming, and fattening and processing of mature mud crabs for sale both locally and overseas; identifying the various mud crab species in mangrove swamps; and the importance of conserving its populations for a sustainable mud crab industry in the future.
The trainees comprised five people from Katatai, four from Sibidiri, five from Buzi, and five from Masingara villages.
The initiative was funded by InLoc Group for CSM to train four villages covered under the border treaty resilience programme with Australia.
About 500 plastic mud crab baskets were brought in from the Philippines to fatten mud crabs would be given out. Magaru added that out of the 14 maritime provinces in the country, New Ireland, Milne Bay, Central, Gulf, and Western were known for supplying a limited quantity of wild mud crabs to the Asian mud crab buyers who export mainly to Singapore, Hong Kong and China.
He said in 2019 alone, statistics indicated that PNG exported more than 500 tons of live mud crabs worth about K110 million to Singapore, and Hong Kong, unfortunately, the figure dropped due to the Coronavirus pandemic.