AP2HI Support Important Indonesian Tuna Business Events
On 19-20 May 2016 over 200 participants gathered at the Discovery Kartika Plaza Hotel, Bali, for the 2nd Bali Tuna Conference (BTC) and 5th International Coastal Tuna Business Forum (ICTBF). The BTC event was opened by the Director of PSDI DJPT Toni Ruchimat, Vice Governor of Bali I Ketut Sudikerta, Chair of International Pole & Line Foundation (IPNLF) John Burton, Director General of Fisheries, Narmoko Prasmadji and the ICTBF was opened by the Coordinating Minister for Maritime, Rizal Ramli.
ICTBF was organized by the Indonesian Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF) with support from the International Pole & Line Foundation (IPNLF) and AP2HI. Alongside the conferences and forums there was an exhibition of several Indonesian and international organizations. The exhibition theme was “Technology and traceability”, thus the participating organizations were those that have started to develop technology to help system traceability, such as AP2HI, Masyarakat dan Perikanan Indonesia (MDPI), Provenance Ltd., Digital Globe, Exact Earth, Oceans and USAID.
This major event was deemed as a great success and led to an agreement among all parties engaged in tuna fisheries, be it industry, government, academia and NGOs, to support sustainable tuna fisheries management and practice, through the development of a traceability system standard. An action plan for tuna pole-and-line and handline was also established, and information about the global market demand increase – especially in Europe and the United States – for Indonesian tuna products which are traceable and have been caught in a more environmentally friendly way, by pole-and-line and handline. Participants who attended came from a variety of organizations, including governments, NGOs (WWF Indonesia, MDPI, etc.), fisheries associations (AP2HI, ASTUIN, APIKI, etc), private sectors (companies at home and abroad), academic (university representatives) and international agencies (UNIDO, USAID Indonesia, etc).
During the first day of BTC a number of notable conversations were had at the panel sessions. Luky Adrianto Dean of the Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Science, Bogor Agricultural University, led the first session on “Sustaining Tuna Fisheries from Upstream Resource” and Abdul Ghofar, Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Sciences, University of Diponegoro led the second session “Implementing Policy and Regulation to Meet Regional and International Market Requirements”.
At ICTBF, the discussion of the first session focused on importance of this annual event and the growing global demand for sustainably sourced coastal tuna, followed by an overview of the pole-and-line and handline tuna fishery and how it compares to the overall tuna catch by Wudianto (MMAF). The discussion in the second session focused on Progress of Harvest Strategy Development within Indonesia Archipelagic Waters by Campbell Davis (CSIRO), MSC certification – market updates and recent developments in the certification standard by Adrian Gutteridge (Marine Stewardships Council), the overall program and meeting FIP requirements – highlights major milestones in the coming 12 months by Agus Budiman (AP2HI), and an outline of the next steps required to meet MSC and critical milestones by Andrew Harvey (IPNLF).
The discussion at the 3rd session was initiated by John Burton (IPNLF) who gave an update on the global market place for pole-and-line and hand-line tuna and future predictions, followed by Timothy Moore (USAID / Oceans) who spoke about the new US import requirements on traceability and seafood fraud, Aditya Surono (MDPI) spoke about Indonesian coastal tuna fisheries positioned to meet US requirements and finally a retailers perspective on traceability and chain of custody requirements currently and in the future by Ally Dingwall from UK retailer Sainsbury’s. For the final session, participants broke out into groups to discuss the Indonesian national tuna plan and requirements and what are required by the industry and governments to achieve MSC.
Written by: Mila
