6 Important Things You Should Know About This Blog

A port laborer transporting a tuna from the fishing boat. Photo Credits

Never in my life did I thought to have something to share about fishing. Not even once. Though I was born in a town just 25 miles from the shore, I never bothered thinking about fishing. My only encounter with the blue waters was when we went for swimming. I was born and raised as a typical small town boy and such was my background.


But now, as you might have guessed, I got involved in the fishing business. Due to the fact that I am a newcomer to this industry, I discovered a lot of new things. Lately, i just felt an urge deep inside me to share the experiences and realizations I had in this new endeavor and, thus, I created this blog.

But this blog is not just an ordinary blog. This blog has a purpose and you have to know the reasons for which it was made for.

Tuna ready for classification. Photo credits

I didn't created this blog just for fun and amusement. I created it to:

1. Tell my story of how I got into this. As I've said earlier, I didn't have interest with the fishing business way back then. In this blog, I will tell you my own story of how I got into this business and my experiences that convinced me to pursue it. 
2. Serve as a guide to those who want to explore the tuna fishing business. For those people who are just starting out with the same kind of business or even for those who just want to know something about it, I want this blog to serve as a good source of information for you. The situations and experiences I have might be different but I'm pretty sure that you can get some useful ideas and tips from it. They say that experience is the best teacher and a successful man always learns from his mistakes but it is always wiser to learn from the mistakes of others too since we can't live long enough to make them all by ourselves. Thus, this blog also aims to spare you from the tears and headaches by allowing you to learn from our mistakes.
3. Serve as a journal. I have high hopes and expectations for this endeavor and I want to become successful in this venture. I made this blog to serve as my diary and to keep track of what is going on. At the time of this writing, I am still a small-time fishing business owner and an ordinary employee working 8 hours a day but i do dream of the day that I can quit my daytime job and focus on the things that I love doing. That is one of the goals i have for this undertaking but we just don't have any means to know that lies ahead of us and that makes me very excited to see what will become of this few years from now. I simply want to share this journey with you.
4. Show to the world the real life of a fishermen. From what you see in the television, fishing seems to be a fun thing to do. You go to a pond with your rod and bait, throw it to the water, sit and wait for a while until you catch something. I never said it wasn't fun but what I am just trying to say here is that things are a little bit different and harder when you depend on fishing tuna for a living. Also, we're not simply talking about ponds and rivers here but the deep blue ocean - dangerous and very unpredictable. Philippines is still a developing country and the technology used by small-scale fishermen is very far behind from what we see in first world countries. Their boats don't have cabins and they just sleep on its corners. They don't use rods in catching fish and they don't have sonar equipment to detect what's underneath them. They stay afloat for almost a month and sometimes they come home empty handed. Can you imagine how hard it is? If you can't then I'll show it to you in this blog.
5. Discover why fishermen in Philippines are poor. Just recently, Philippines was ranked seventh among the top fish producing countries in the world. Fishing is a 50 billion pesos industry in the Philippines, contributing about 4% of the country’s GNP and with an annual production volume of 2.4 million metric tons of fish, it directly provides livelihood and employment to over one million Filipinos.   General Santos City (GenSan), the tuna capital of the Philippines, alone exports about 100-200 metric tons of tuna to the United States of America, Europe and Japan. This sector sells the highest grade tuna and generates huge earnings. But why is it that the fisher-folks here are considered the "poorest among the poor"? Is it because of unfair practices? Illiteracy? Spending habits? Another goal of this blog is to discover the real reason behind why there are only very few fishermen who manage to get out of poverty. Let us together take a look at how most of the tuna fishermen handle their finances and think of ways to make it better.
6. Attract potential buyers and partners. Business is business. I want to make this blog as another marketing arm that is capable of defying the boundaries placed by physical locations. I am an IT by profession and I am very well aware of the potential growth for a business once it is made available online. Right now, since we still belong to the small-scale sector, we are highly affected by the frequent fluctuation of the price. I know very well the fact that the law of supply and demand cannot be changed but I strongly believe that our catch could be priced much higher than what it has right now. If you know of people who are interested to buy high quality tuna, please let them know about this blog or if you, yourself, want to talk business with me, I am very much willing to sit down and drink a cup of coffee with you. :)

I cannot promise you that this journey will be a smooth sailing one but I can guarantee you that it will be very exciting, fun, and full of learning. So, hold on tight!

Van