NASSAU, BAHAMAS — The fishing industry is hoping that fuel prices begin to trend downward before the 2022/2023 crawfish season opens on August 1.
Bahamas Commercial Fishers Alliance (BCFA) president Adrian Laroda lamented that fishermen will have some hard decisions to make with fuel costs having nearly doubled.
“Fuel prices like everything else has affected us,” he said.
“Fortunately the last season closed just before fuel prices really started going up. We hope that by the time the season opens in August they would have gone back to pre-March levels.
“Some fishers have already said they will have to make some hard decisions on if and when they go out to fish. What would have been $10,000, $12,000 or $15,000 just on fuel could now cost an operator $25,000 to $30,000. We hope prices start to trend downward.”
He said: “The cost of fuel has affected primarily the scale fishermen and we noticed that during the Easter period. They would have felt the initial brunt of the fuel increases. Fortunately, the cost of diesel hasn’t gone through the rough but the price is still high.”
According to LaRoda, the 2021/2022 crawfish season was a good one, with harvest up about 25 percent.
“We could attribute that to a number of factors, one of which was the effect of Hurricane Dorian on the ocean temperature and that sort of thing and greater enforcement by the Royal Bahamas Defence Force,” he said.
“We’re back into the export market and while the profit margin on exports hasn’t increased exponentially there have been some slight increases.”
The crawfish season runs from August 1 to March 31.
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