The Marshall Islands Fishing Venture processing facility and dock in Delap is a hub of activity from early morning to late at night.
Behind the scenes is a major coordination operation dovetailing the arrival of longline fishing boats with the Asia Pacific Airlines flight dates so that yellowfin and bigeye tuna can be offloaded on the dock, processed and packed in the MIFV processing plant for delivery to the airport the same day with a minimum of time wasted at any point.
In addition to what is usually a twice-weekly processing operation for the APA export flights, processing of other tuna products proceeds on a daily basis.
Local customers benefit from MIFV providing frozen, boxed tuna in various grades of quality or parts of the fish at a reasonable price.
MIFV crews pack boxes that meet the 50-pound limit of United Airlines check in luggage, which is why on any given flight from Majuro to Honolulu, anyone at the airport is likely to see more than 20 of these boxes of frozen fish being checked in for delivery to relatives waiting with anticipation in Hawaii and the US mainland.
Individual workers package scraps and various cuttings of tuna into five and 10 pound plastic bags, which they sell to local customers for a dollar a pound. Talk about a deal on fresh tuna.