Fishermen eye grounds

Press, 14 January 1987, Page 2

Fishermen eye grounds

In spite of gloomy predictions about markets for albacore tuna Nelson trawlers will. fish West Coast tuna grounds. Mr Damian Briggs, ;eneral manager of ffestfleet Fishermen’s Co-operative, last week predicted misery for the, West Coast unless markets were found for . this season’s albacore catch. Westfleet and Talley’s Fisheries, of Motueka, are the only two com-, panies handling albacore, tuna catches. Mr Briggs said yesterday that the situation had not changed since

last week when there had been no demand from traditional markets in Spain, Pago Pago, 1 Japan and France. However, his company was still buying. “Hopefully we’ll find some markets before we run out of storage,” he said. Mr Briggs said he felt the markets could be found, in time. Mr Peter Talley, managing director of Talley’s Fisheries, had no doubts. He said there were problems with the United

States markets for skipjack tuna. “This isn’t worrying us too much because in the last four years we have diversified* away from the United States because of the skipjack oversupply problem and have established a clientele elsewhere,” he said. Mr Talley said that if Westfleet was unable to handle the albacore tuna because of a lack of markets his company would be very pleased to buy the catches.

Some Nelson trawlers have already left for the tuna grounds off the West Coast, a traditional summer season fishing resource. Others were completing preparations yesterday. One was the Kay Dee, a new wooden-hulled trawler of 12.89 m which is owned by Ken Craig and Don Gilchrist, of Nelson. Mr Craig, a boat builder, and Mr Gilchrist, an engineer, teamed up and built the boat in their spare time. They expect to leave for the West Coast later this week.