New Zealand's commercial fishers landed 2200 tonnes of albacore tuna last year, with most of it exported to canneries in Europe.
Seafood Council trade general manager Alastair MacFarlane says albacore tuna - known as "chicken of the sea" - is a reasonably good value fish and just one of several tuna species exported annually.
The 2000 tonnes of albacore exported last year contributed $8 million towards New Zealand's $35 million tuna fishing industry, which is dominated in value and tonnage by the skip jack tuna.
"It [albacore] is part of a much larger stock.
"We have a very small fishery compared to the total stock of albacore, which moves all around the Pacific.
"The albacore Pacific catch was 100,000 [tonnes] plus.
"So we are really a very small part of it," Mr MacFarlane said.
In 2004, it was estimated about 500 commercial tuna boats were working in New Zealand waters.
About 100 are based on the West Coast.
There is no measure of how much albacore is caught by recreational fishers, of which there are many.
Neither sector has a limit on the number of albacore they may land.
The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention, signed by several nations, including New Zealand and Australia, does not impose a quota management system on the fish.
Mr MacFarlane said a quota had been suggested but none of the convention members had made any quota decisions.
Until that happened, there was "not much point" in an albacore quota in New Zealand.
What that means is there is little or no capital cost to catching albacore, although commercial fishers are likely to have more gear and will want to land the fish as quickly as possible, whereas recreational fishers are more likely to "play with their lunch".
Mr MacFarlane said exporters last year received about $5 a kilogram for frozen albacore, including the price of transporting it to the market.
A Talleys tuna spokesman said commercial fishers were being paid $2500 per tonne, before GST, for albacore weighing more than 4kg.
For smaller albacore tuna, the price is $2100 a tonne.
The market has recovered since 2008, when prices were lower.
But prices went up and down all the time.
It depended on the exchange rate and the northern hemisphere season, the Talleys spokesman said.
"We are the tail of the dog as far as the albacore catch goes.
"The quantity we supply is infinitesimal to what they [the European canneries] buy . . .
"We are just a clip-on . . .
"If they [northern hemisphere fishers] have had a really good season [the canneries] are not breaking their necks to buy our fish," the Talleys man said.
Mr MacFarlane said the development of a niche market in Europe had also contributed to healthy returns in the last two or three years, despite the recession.
"The euro's price relationship with the New Zealand dollar has been pretty stable through all the ups and downs of the US-NZ dollar relationship.
"It's about $2 to one euro and had nothing like the variance with the US dollar or the pound," he said.
The numbers
Tuna (all varieties) is not on New Zealand's top 10 list of export fish.
New Zealand's fishing industry brings in a total of $1.3 billion in export earnings.
Tuna contributes $35 million to that total.
The top 10 export earners are:
- Mussels ($202 million)
- Rock lobster ($184 million)
- Hoki ($152 million)
- Squid ($75 million)
- Salmon ($61 million)
- Orange roughy ($51 million)
- Paua ($48 million)
- Jack mackerel ($46 million)
- Ling ($42 million)
- Snapper ($36 million).
2009 tuna statistics:Total export volume all tuna: 8000 tonnes (albacore 2000 tonnes).
Total export value all tuna: $35 million (albacore $8 million).
