The combined tonnage bought by three companies buying trochus at Ollei, Ngarchelong at the end of the first day of the harvest season was a mere 6,900 pound – a far cry from 40,000 pounds recorded on the first day of 2004 season.
According to Tino Kloulechad of Palau Conservation Society, the first day of this year’s trochus harvest feels like the 25th day of the season. He added that his records of the past two seasons indicate that the number of trochus – at least in the Northern Reefs – have declined drastically.Kloulechad has diligently kept records of the first day of trochus harvest season in the Northern Reefs for the past three seasons. His records show the number of boats that weigh their harvest at Ollei Port as well as the actual weight of the harvest bought at the end of each business day.Kloulechad’s records show that during the first day of the 2004 harvest season, a total of 48 boats weighed their harvest at Ollei Port. The combined weight of the boats’ harvest bought was 40,000 pounds, which averages out to about 833 pounds per boat.His record of this season’s first day shows that only 32 boats turned in their harvest. The combined weight bought– as indicated by the three companies (HANPA Industrial Development Corporation, Eberdong and Sons Co., and Tmewang Rengulbai) buying trochus at Ollei Port this season – from the 32 boats is only 6,900 pounds, which averages to about 216 pounds per boat.According to Kloulechad, said that each season each boat carries an average of three people. He calculated that in 2004 a single person could have harvested as much as the average harvest per boat for this season. He added that all of the people who went out on the first day say that they had to “really look hard for the trochus.”Chief Obak er Iyebukel Lorenzo Ngiramolau commented that the bountiful previous harvest is due to the efforts of the Micronesian Mariculture Demonstration Centre and the work of Bureau of Marine Resources. Ngiramolau said that sometimes in the late 1980’s and on, the BMR had provided Ngarchelong with juvenile trochus that the people of Ngarchelong had “planted” in designated areas of the Northern Reefs to replenish the trochus population. He said more than ten thousand juvenile trochus were dispersed.Actual documents that the first attempt at studying trochus was done in Palau by a Japanese biologist in the 1930’s and early 1940’s. However, the first documented and successful rearing of trochus larvae to young juveniles was indeed accomplished in Palau in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s by researchers Ann Hillman and Gerald Heslinga. Their accomplishment eventually led to BMR providing juvenile trochus to interested state governments to replenish their reefs’ trochus population.According to Ngiramolau, the decline in trochus harvest can be attribute to the fact that the MMDC and BMR trochus program is no longer active; and “we have harvested from the reefs since 2000 and have yet made any attempt s to replenish in anticipation of the next harvest.“We should make every effort to replenish the reefs with juvenile trochus,” Ngiramolau stated, “we are highly mobile, especially with speed boats; and the speed at which we harvest the trochus has exceeded the trochus breeding rate.”Kloulechad further added that algae – as studies have shown – if all of trochus are harvested, would decimate the Northern Reefs. Moreover, the corals would probably be wiped out.He added that trochus breeding programs should be revived again.
