Senoko Fishery Port to close by end-March 2024

Merchants to move to Jurong Fishery Port, as Singapore turns page on fishing trade

- Ng Keng Gene

Senoko Fishery Port is set to close by the end of the first quarter of 2024, with its merchants moving to Singapore's only other fishing port in Jurong.

The move to Jurong Fishery Port will begin when construction work to revamp the facility, which began earlier in 2023, is complete.

Speaking to The Straits Times, some merchants said they were told this will take place by end-March 2024.

The work includes building an annex to the current wholesale market block that will add 20 market lots to the existing 110 lots.

The annex will cater to Senoko merchants, said the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), which operates both fishery ports and announced in June 2020 that the two facilities will be consolidated.

The Senoko facility, which currently has about 25 merchants, began operations in 1997 as the purpose-built home base of Singapore's fishing fleet.

Its end marks "another point in the gradual decline, if not the effective end, of capture fisheries in Singapore", said S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) senior analyst Choo Ruizhi.

But the chapter was effectively closed on commercial fishing in Singapore's waters about two years ago, when the last of the local fishing boats here were sold off by wholesaler Lian Yak Fish Merchant. The wholesaler business, which was started in 1955, had more than 10 boats when it moved to Senoko in 1997.

That was the year when fishermen and merchants moved from Punggol Fishing Port and Wholesale Fish Market to make way for the new town's development.