2007年VOA标准英语-Philippines Tuna Industry Short of Fish as Glob

By Douglas Bakshian
General Santos City
06 September 2007

Worldwide tuna catches are falling as demand strains the supply. Tuna stocks in the Atlantic and Mediterranean¹ have dropped, in recent years, prompting a cut in catch quotas². Supplies also appear tight in the Pacific Ocean. Douglas Bakshian recently traveled to General Santos City, home to six of seven tuna canneries in the Philippines, to find out what is happening.

Cans of tuna

Tuna is king in General Santos, a small town on the southern island of Mindanao that is known as the tuna capital of the Philippines.

Madelyn De Manuel, 43, rises at three in the morning to get to work at Ocean Canning Corporation. After a 10-kilometer ride in a jeepney, or mini-bus, she arrives around five at the plant where she cleans fish. Work is awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Out of 600 people who show up in the mornings, only about 400 are employed for most shifts.

Madelyn is paid for the amount of fish she cleans, and she has seen a big drop in her income. She averages almost four dollars a day, but that is down from $5.50 in recent months.

She has six children and a husband who works as a security guard, and the family is feeling the financial pinch.

"We have to budget the income. Before if you can buy some meat, now only vegetables, salted fish," she explains.

The cannery normally operates 24 hours a day. But for the first time in its 10-year history, it is down to one eight-hour canning shift. The ships are bringing back fewer fish and there is little to can.

Plant manager Mariano Fernandez says he is down to as few as 600 workers a day, from about 1500 in the past few months. Fernandez, who also heads the local cannery association, says all six canneries in General Santos are operating under similar conditions.

"You could just imagine that one purse-seiner, a big vessel³, that can load 2,000 metric tons of tuna. They stay there (at sea) for several months and they come home with 300 tons only. So this is unusual."

Man carries whole tuna

Domingo Alape is in charge of marketing⁴ for Frabelle Fishing, which owns a tuna fleet. He told reporters at a dock where one of his ships was unloading, that in the past two months the Western Pacific yielded the worst catch he has seen during 20 years in the business.

"There was a crisis for two months, July and August was really, really very bad. Catch maybe for us is around 40 to 45 percent less," he says.

He says other boats have the same problem. However, he says his total . Explanations vary from market forces to nature. Some say the catch in the Indian Ocean is down and Thailand, which normally buys fish there, is purchasing from Filipino ships in the Western Pacific.

"The real scenario⁵ of why catching⁶ is so bad this year, nobody could safely tell you why it is so," says Paul Candelaria, president of the Philippines Tuna Canning Association. "Some are saying it is because of the migrating pattern, or the feeding pattern after the (2004) tsunami⁷. Some would say this year it is because of the global warming, some would tell you that it is because of over-fishing."

Philippine tuna industry officials get their information from ships at sea and other people in the business. They offer no scientific data to support their observations. That will be left to international organizations that monitor the environment, and it takes time to determine patterns after data is collected.

Environmentalists have warned that tuna could face extinction⁸ if current fishing rates continue. A meeting in Japan in January approved the first international plan to save tuna from over-fishing.

Last year, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas decided⁹ to gradually reduce the catch of bluefin.

Man carries fish

Philippine operators estimate that the tuna business generates more than 120,000 jobs. Some call for government subsidies¹⁰ to get through the hard times.

Whatever the reasons for the tuna shortage, it hurts people in General Santos. Fish cleaner Madelyn De Manuel fears for her job.

"We are very much worried. Because if we have no fish, we have no work," she says.

At the end of August, General Santos held its annual tuna congress and festival, with parades, speeches and other events. But some wonder if there will be anything to celebrate next year.

1 Mediterranean   

adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的

参考例句：

• The houses are Mediterranean in character.这些房子都属地中海风格。
• Gibraltar is the key to the Mediterranean.直布罗陀是地中海的要冲。

2 quotas   

（正式限定的）定量( quota的名词复数 )； 定额； 指标； 摊派

参考例句：

• In fulfilling the production quotas, John made rings round all his fellow workers. 约翰完成生产定额大大超过他的同事们。
• Quotas of the means of production are allocated by the higher administrative bodies to the lower ones. 物资指标按隶属关系分配。

3 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

4 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

5 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

6 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

7 tsunami   

n.海啸

参考例句：

• Powerful quake sparks tsunami warning in Japan.大地震触发了日本的海啸预警。
• Coastlines all around the Indian Ocean inundated by a huge tsunami.大海啸把印度洋沿岸地区都淹没了。

8 extinction   

n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种

参考例句：

• The plant is now in danger of extinction.这种植物现在有绝种的危险。
• The island's way of life is doomed to extinction.这个岛上的生活方式注定要消失。

9 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

10 subsidies   

n.补贴，津贴，补助金( subsidy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• European agriculture ministers failed to break the deadlock over farm subsidies. 欧洲各国农业部长在农业补贴问题上未能打破僵局。
• Agricultural subsidies absorb about half the EU's income. 农业补贴占去了欧盟收入的大约一半。 来自《简明英汉词典》