Pingtan Marine Enterprise is set to deploy four tuna longline vessels to fish in the international waters of the Pacific Ocean
These tuna longline fishing vessels are licensed and sanctioned by the Chinese Fisheries Management Bureau under the Ministry of Agriculture of China to operate and fish in the International Waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Longline fishing is a method of fishing that uses a long line with baited hooks attached at intervals by means of branch lines to target fish species such as tuna.
Xinrong Zhuo, chairman and CEO of the Pingtan, said: "We continue to seek methods to utilize our assets, and we have charted global areas on the deployment of our fishing fleets since the Indonesian government moratorium occurred.”
He added: “After conducting research on the current market and cost-benefit analysis, we decided to deploy the four longline fishing vessels into the international waters of the Pacific Ocean, which would provide a new fishing field for our fleets without causing overfishing in any region.”
“With China's economic growth in recent years, China has become one of the major importing nations for seafood products. We expect that the deployment and operation of these vessels will enable us to harvest top quality tuna products for the domestic market."
The company expects the tuna longline fishing vessels to be put into operation and begin recognizing sales in the first quarter of 2017.
Each fishing vessels can generate annual revenue of approximately $3m with annual net income of approximately $800,000 to $1m.
Pingtan currently operates 135 fishing vessels, 12 of which are operating in the Bay of Bengal in India, 13 vessels operating in Indo-Pacific Waters, and two vessels will be operating the international waters of Southwest Atlantic and Southeast Pacific Oceans by late December 2016.
With the deployment of these four tuna longline fishing vessels, it expects to recover its production capacity to approximately 30%.
