Climate change is driving fisheries into Arctic and Antarctic Oceans - snow covered North and South Poles, as marine species are feared to deplete in warm water seas of the world, experts on Friday warned.
Giving a presentation at a fisheries seminar, titled "Emerging Investment Opportunities & Sustainable Way Forward", which the Employers' Federation of Pakistan (EFP) organized at a local hotel, Muhammad Junaid Hanif, an industry research analyst, warned that commercial fisheries were in danger in Pakistan due to the over trawling of juvenile fisheries and pollution.
The seminar was sponsored by the Al-Baraka Bank.
Unfolding the challenges that the country's fisheries sector is faced with, he said that there was a cold storage issue, fast depletion of the local species, falling down of resources since juvenile has become a priority catch for fishermen. Over-fishing and excessive boat fleet, he said, was responsible for the low fisheries sector growth, adding that the industrial waste also threatened mangroves existence.
He pointed out that there was no low-cost farming available in the country, which was the reason for struggling fisheries sector. He said that the climate change had forced the fish species to make exodus to the frozen Arctic and Antarctic Oceans from warm seas, which would further scale back the marine species stocks.
At the panel discussion, Muhammad Moazzam Khan, former Director General, Marine Fisheries Department, Faisal Iftikhar Ali, former Chief Executive Officer of Fisheries Development Board, Commodore (retd) Syed Obaidullah, Maritime Analyst, Dr Shahid Amjad, Head of Environment & Energy Department at the Institute of Business Management, and Mehboob-ul-Haq, Managing Director, Sindh Enterprise Development Fund, expressed their views on fisheries sector's underdevelopment and future growth prospects.
Syed Asim Rashid, President and Chief Executive Officer of the CreativeSwan, served as moderator of panel deliberations.
At the panel discussion, Moazzam Khan said that the country's fisheries sector needed only a fleet of 4,000 boats, whereas 16,000 vessels operate regularly to exploit the seas.
He said that the post-harvest loss stood at 80 percent, of which a majority of seafood still remained unfit for human consumption.
"Fish becomes unfit for human consumption soon after its catch within a 10 minutes span," he said, adding that the seafood processing plants operated only up to 15 percent of capacity because the raw material was insufficient to cater to their needs at the local market.
He observed that freshwater fish farming was increasing in the country.
Faisal Iftikhar said that the industry felt the existing data available on fisheries sector was "untrue", saying that HS code for tilapia fish was mentioned wrongly, which was declared for other products in Customs declarations. Squid and cuttlefish were excluded from the export list, he said, adding that the FTA would not have a significant effect on fisheries sector's export to China. He feared that the high-value seafood products were facing depletion.
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