How many of you ever think the tuna steak, tuna sashimi, or canned tuna you eat might came from the Southern most city of Philippines, or Philippines at all? General Santos is the tuna capital of Philippines, export quality products supply big consumers like the US, Hong Kong, even Japan.
On my way to the port, there was delicious smell of tuna from nearby tuna processing plants. At the port, a few boats were unloading their catch, from a relatively small boats for such big fishes, the mother boat was only 12 meters long, and many even much smaller tiny boats were attached to the mother boat for hand line fishing.
Tuna more or less the same weight of mine were one by one taken to the whole sell auction, with a number tag on their skin in sequence, 212, 213, 214… I was surprised by how many tunas that boat could contain and still counting, so I asked the fishermen, they told me it’s about 400 tunas they caught this time.
“So how many days you are out to the sea each time?” I asked, the fishermen said “about 35 days, 3 days go out, 3 days come back”, and stay in the fishing spot for about a month with an average of 15 tunas each day.
Before I was planning to ask one of these boat see if I can go fishing with them, think it must be very interesting, apparently this little Chinese man was just too ignorant.
EyesOfChris 