Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves has underscored the need for more persons to get involved in lobster harvesting if this country is to be able to supply the demand coming from Rainforest Seafood which is headquartered in Jamaica and currently constructing a 30,000 sq ft processing plant at Calliaqua.
“I just saw a report from Rainforest Seafood. Rainforest Seafood is going to need up to about 300 persons selling them lobsters. At least150 pounds of lobster per week, each of them.
“Now, Camillo tells me that in Calliaqua, during the season, the men in Calliaqua would do 200 or 200 pounds plus per day. But, we need more people,” Dr Gonsalves said as he called the interactive Issue at Hand programme on WE FM on Sunday.
The Prime Minister said that the lobster fishermen in Calliaqua also have to supply the hotels in addition to the demand from Rainforest Seafood SVG Ltd.
“We have to incentivize more people to go and to get involved in the lobster business. So these things require our people, too, to be listening – not just to listen to garbage,” he said.
The construction of the Rainforest Seafoods processing plant is scheduled to take 18 months and is estimated to cost EC$10 million.
The plant includes installation of cold storage with the capacity for 250,000 pounds of seafood, blast freezers, processing rooms, and state-of-the-art equipment to allow at-source retail packaging.
On completion, Rainforest Seafoods will use the plant to process and export both fresh and frozen, sustainably harvested seafood products.
The company also has operations in St Lucia and Belize.
Save this article for when this too shall fall through. Remember is under the ulp and nothing is possible.
That is 20 tons of lobsters a week. Rainforest has already destroyed the lobster fishing in Jamaica due to encouraging over fishing. Unless the brakes are put on their activities all the conch and lobsters will be depleted in two years.
The seasons need extra months tacking on the front and end of the seasons to try and help with breeding recovery. So the closed season should be from 1st of April to last day of September. Unless that is done lobster and conch will be a story some old geezer will tell our grandchildren.
I have seen men carrying sacks full of lobster caught all through the closed season in SVG, because no one enforces the law and nasty selfish people are willing to buy them.
Then some fat old twat wants to encourage the destruction of our lobster fishing by encouraging people to catch more.
If anyone can video at Rainforest depot product being loaded in a ULP politicians car, please send it to the editor for him to pass on to me.
Lobster harvesters are divers. Most of whom scuba dive. Does the ministry of agriculture plan to privide scuba diving training and offer duty free concession on scuba equipment to encourage more divers to get involve in this process. And with this high demand will we be able to supply both local and export martkets. More questions than answers.