JAKARTA - Skipjack Fishermen in Kupang City, East Nusa Tenggara, have been parking their boats for a month due to difficulties in getting a supply of bait to catch fish.
"The skipjack fishing boats have been parked for about a month, since mid-December 2020 until now because there is no bait," said Muhamad Nasir, a skipjack fisherman based at the Tenau Fishing Port, quoted from Antara, Wednesday, January 27.
He said 10 pole and line fishing boats that catch skipjack and tuna are based in Kupang City, currently only parked around Semau Island waters.
This is because the fishermen have difficulty getting bait in the form of live fish supplied by the chartan ships in the area.
"The weather is not too bad for pole and line vessels, it's just that the smaller Bagan ships do not go to sea so there is no bait supply," said the owner and captain of the pole and line ship KM Nurul Hikmah.
Nasir predicts that the difficulty in providing bait like this will last until the end of February 2021.
However, if later the Bagan ships are still not operating due to bad weather, the pole and line fishermen will head to the Flores Island area to get a supply of bait.
Meanwhile, the fishermen coordinator at the Tenau Fishery Port, Abdul Wahab Sidin, said that the conditions of bait difficulties experienced by tuna fishing boats occur every year.
"Fishermen cannot do much because the bait supply relies on bagan vessels so that when they are not operating there will be no bait," he said.
Wahab Sidin said that this condition is very difficult for the fishermen's economy because there is no main source of income.
"At times like this, fishermen only rely on odd jobs, some are only guarding the boats while waiting for the bait supply to improve," he said.
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