In a blink of an eye, five whole weeks passed just like that. Much progress regarding our Venture has happened since then. From field trips, in-person seminars and online classes, to scheduled and street interviews. Every journey and unforeseen challenge are a new learning experience on its own.
For this week’s reflection, I will be writing about our venture’s ‘fishy’ field trip which took place 2 weeks ago! The field trip lasted two days, and its purpose was to investigate and validate our predictions regarding the local fishery supply chain map.
Here’s an overview of our journey:
The Outdoors
Our team started our journey in the early hours of a weekday morning. We headed to the major fishery ports in Singapore only to find out they are closed to public (as part of the pandemic crowd-control and safety measures).
With disappointment and tiredness, we called it a morning, went back to rest, and began the next section of our field trip 3 hours later.
Our first stop (A) was a wet marketplace. We wanted to find out if there is any and how much marine discards are disposed in a single store. Shortly after we arrived, we were greeted and invited by a friendly fishmonger uncle to his store. He shared with us the fresh produce he has to offer, and his own life experience doing the business. It was an awesome conversation, and we took away the following:
- Most discards thrown away are fish inert
- Fish skin are rarely requested to be removed by their customers
- Depending on the type of fish, fish skins may be difficult to remove (usually too thin for removal)
- Benjamin and I bought two fishes each — a pomfret and a snapper
- Our team need to expand our knowledge on the types of fishes available in the market and in general
Next, we went to a Koi farm (B). From our research online, we observed that the Koi farm recently expanded to aquaculture and aquaponics. We wanted to find out more about their expansion plans and how their produce contribute to the fishery supply chain map we are investigating. During our time at the Koi farm, we observed how an ornamental fish farm is run, what edible produce are available for public sales and how a consumer may purchase these edible produce.
Much as ornamental fish farms and aquarium supplies may not be directly related to our venture, we did not want to leave any stone unturned or fishes unseen. Thus, we decided to check out a couple other aquarium supplies store and farms (C), and another ornamental fish farm (D).
My most memorable experience of this field trip would be our visit to Cichlid Aquarium Supplies/ Jireh Marine Aquarium (D):
We arrived at the venue during the warm hours of a sunny afternoon. At first glance, it seemed like we were the only humans around (with no others in sight). We decided to wander a little, till we were greeted by the owner of the fish farm. He asked us about our purpose of visit, and we shared that we were there to just observe and have a look. To our surprise, he asked us if we wanted to see the fishes he had, and proceeded to exercise his 30–40 years of skills and experience in this business.
For the first time ever, I held, touched and learnt to handle a few different types of fishes — and I must silently shout in excitement:
“THIS WAS THE MOST AMAZING EXPERIENCE EVER!”.
While this stop may not be directly related to the mapping of our local fish produce supply chain, the hands-on experience gives us a sneak preview to how fishes may be handled and bred in a fish farm. It also exposes us to another type of beautiful ornamental fish in the market — the Cichlid.
Important note: No fishes were harmed in the process! All fishes were handled with gentle love and care.
The Indoors
For this segment of our supply chain investigation, we decided to visit the different major local supermarket stores (F) to observe how fresh marine produce are handled, what fish-related products are offered, and if there are any leads regarding our fish supply chain investigation.
We also visited a couple of food hawkers and restaurants (E & G) that serve fish-based dishes, and talked to the owners of this stores to find out more about fish discards.
Our takeaways for this segment of our field trip are:
- Most restaurants will utilize every last edible inch of their raw ingredients
- Fish produce are usually sold in a pre-cut fashion to restaurant kitchens
(i.e. fish inert and skin are not in the equation of delivery) - Where most of the fish discards go to in Singapore is still an investigation-in-progress
In Summary
This field trip opened our eyes and exposure to the different types of value chain in the fishing industry. While the mystery of where most of the fish discards go is still unsolved, I’m glad we are one step closer to finding our answer, and that all the above are clues and checkboxes — either ticked or crossed — to our investigation.
Till the next update, cheers!
