Fishy business. The Social Impact of SST.pdf - Act Now!

Blue Water Tuna is a private PNG company founded and owned by the well-known PNGbusinessman, Sir Hugo Berghusor. The company, which is popularly known as BWT, waseastablished in early 1998 and hold a license from the PNG Government for longlinefishing in PNG territory waters. The objective of BWT is to develop PNG’s rich fishresources in an environmentally responsible way which adds value and creates employmentfor PNG nationals.The operation of BWT is divided into two parts, the current fishing fleet operations (BlueWater Tuna) and fish processing and in future, canning. At present BWT has three fishingvessels which are based in Port Moresby and operate in the Gulf region of PNG’s coastalwaters. These boats operate on a five to six day turnaround, and are using longlines to catchpremium albacore and skipjack tuna for export to the sashimi market in Japan.The other part of the BWT operations is fish processing. Canning operation [sic] are due tocommence in 2002. A fish cleaning and storage facility has recently been completed at 17Mile, Central Province, which is being used to clean and gut fish ready for export. BWT hasalso recently acquired the Sapphire Smallgoods business, which is located adjacent to thefish processing facility, and will use part of the Sapphire factory to install a fish canningline. This line, which is due to be commissioned in October 2001 [will] have a capacity of400,000 cases of canned fish a year, and the product will be for both the domestic PNGmarket and export.To date, neither BWT, SMPL or Sepik Sea Products has a license to export fish. And yetrecords show that SSPL recently he sold 2000 kgs recently sold to Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd.,Japan, for K20,000 (see receipt below). In addition, Sir Hugo’s ‘environmentally responsible’fishing techniques feature his stated desire to have the “whales in the Bismarck Sea killed tosave the fishing industry." According to the Post-Courier article, "We must kill thewhales...there's too many of them"…"the whales eat up to 80% of the tuna caught by the longliners"(which seems unlikely for a whale species that eats squid).Clearly the Director of Sepik Sea Products feels a sense of immunity from PNG andinternational law. Unfortunately this is in keeping with the general business climate of the EastSepik Province at present.Views of the restaurant bar in the Windjammer: bodybuilding soft porn, and the Bismark flag. Aportrait of Sir Michael Somare hangs on the corridor to the kitchen.A well-placed Provincial Government figure:On the land by the Fisheries Wharf, and the Windjammer:40