Xu Chengyi / Taiwan's mackerel industry, what's the next step? Find the most suitable position and management

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(by Phil Newell / Xu Chengyi) (founder of Shengsheng Ocean and responsible Fisheries Index)

Mackerel is the most important species in Taiwan's coastal fishery. Taiwan's mackerel is mainly located in the northeast waters of Taiwan, mainly with flower-bellied mackerel and less white-bellied mackerel. Nanao is the most important fishing base for mackerel in Taiwan. in the early years, mackerel was fished with a small boat in the open sea, which was a famous "trough". The catch was small and the risk was high, but in the era of small catch, it also accumulated great wealth for the fishing village. Subsequently, a large purse seine was introduced by Japan, which changed Taiwan's mackerel industry from household economy to industrial production, led to the development of mackerel cannery and freezer plants in Suao, and found a good market for a large increase in mackerel production.

After 2000, Taiwanese operators even combined large purse seine and trawl into "scraping nets", which could greatly reduce investment, improve fishing efficiency, and become the mainstream fishing method. The once-dominant mackerel purse seine also entered history in 2013. The use of many modern electronic devices with scraping nets has greatly increased the production of mackerel, but at the same time poses the threat of overuse of this resource. In 2013, the government began mackerel fishing management, and some mackerel stocks began to recover. As production declines, so does the price of mackerel. What happened to mackerel?

Data collation, chart making / Xu Chengyi

(2) what is the domestic alternative market?

In Taiwan, mackerel is not only for human consumption, but also for "indirect consumption" in Taiwan. First of all, Taiwan's 200000-ton tuna longline fishing is a big customer of mackerel, and longline fishing has many options as bait, including squid, saury, milkfish, sardines and mackerel scads. Due to the rising prices of squid and saury in recent years, mackerel scads are the main bait for longline fishing.

At present, most of Taiwan's longline vessels buy bait from Taiwan, and each voyage always requires 50-100 tons of bait. Every year, Taiwan needs 10-20,000 tons of mackerel scad, and mackerel is the main type. In the future, due to the impact of resource management, Taiwan's longline production capacity should decline, and so will the demand for mackerel scads.

In 2011, when mackerel was abundant in Taiwan, Taiwan was developing gentian grouper culture. These large, high-priced fish did not have enough artificial feed to feed, and mackerel and mackerel just filled the demand for raw bait. Raising 1 kilogram of grouper requires about 3 kilograms of raw bait, and 5000 tons of large fish needs 15000 tons of raw bait. Mackerel prices are supported. The export of gentian grouper has been blocked the year after the mainland began to extravagance, so the demand for mackerel has continued to decline in the past three years.

Prospect: re-finding the optimal location of native mackerel

The sustainable development of the industry needs to achieve a balance among environment, industry and consumption under effective management. Taiwan's mackerel is an important representative of Taiwan's fishery development, and we have some expectations for the future:

First, mackerel fishery management has been on the road in 103 years, and after several years of efforts, the resources of mackerel mackerel have slightly recovered. I hope we can continue to improve this fishery management and make mackerel fisheries an example of sustainable utilization of Taiwan's fishing industry. However, the resources of white-bellied mackerel are mainly in the northern waters under our jurisdiction, and we can only actively participate in and cooperate with the relevant management measures of Japan and China.

Second, at the industrial end, we must take increasing the value of mackerel as the direction of our efforts, the current low-price competition strategy is not supportive for the future industrial development, and now there is still huge room for improvement in mackerel fishing and processing quality. how to develop competitive products based on the domestic market is a problem to be quickly faced. The stable quality, quantity and price of mackerel provide an excellent basis for industrial processing, and the era of blindly selling whole fish at a low price as an industrial development strategy is over!

Third, mackerel is not a high unit price of seafood, but a national seafood that can be eaten every day. In the past, salted mackerel and canned mackerel in tomato sauce played the due role of mackerel. However, with the huge and irreversible changes in eating habits, population structure and access structure, mackerel is bound to re-enter the lives of Taiwanese consumers in different forms. We should abandon the stereotype of mackerel and welcome a healthier, more convenient, more delicious but the price is very friendly to the people of environmental protection seafood!

In the past, there was a proverb in Southern Australia describing the wealth brought by mackerel: farming is to look for a winter, and to ask for the sea is to earn a day. In the future, we have to add the concept of sustainability to become: keep the mackerel scad in, not afraid of no fish to eat.

[1] mackerel (mackerel, scientific name: Scomber australasicus)

[2] mackerel (real mackerel, English: Chub mackerel, Scomber japonicus)

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