Trinidad & Tobago consists of two main islands which names build its designation and also include other 21 small enclaves. The country is located in the southern Caribbean, lying northeast of the South American nation of Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles. It also shares maritime boundaries with Barbados to the northeast and Guyana to the southeast.

The Economy of Trinidad & Tobago is dominated by the Energy Sector. The country is the 5th largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world and the leading provider of LNG to the USA. But despite the petrochemical sector also the island play quite significant role on the U.S. tuna market, being the 6th largest supplier place in terms of delivered quantity of tuna during 2007.

That is pretty good score considering that the tuna fishing sector does not play major role on the islands.  Tuna exports contribute 0,09% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product, and tuna processing plants employ 1,18%  of the islands total labor force.

In 2007 Trinidad & Tobago shipped in total 13.859 M/T of all tuna products combined to the USA, this was 21% less compared to the previous year. The country provided four different types of  products to this market: frozen pre-cooked tuna loins, fresh and frozen tuna meat, and tuna in pouch.

Pre-cooked tuna loins were the major product with 10.113 M/T or 73% of the total export . Its volume decreased by 18% from 12.299 M/T  in 2006, but despite this drop Trinidad & Tobago remained a leading supplier to the US canning industry, being the second U.S. exporter of pre-cooked loins after Fiji.

Fresh tuna exports amounted 2.998 M/T,  consisting out of Yellowfin, Bigeye and other tunas. During 2007 shipments of fresh Yellowfin fell sharply by  42% and went down from 4.011 M/T to 2.332 M/T.  Most of the fresh tuna export was yellowfin, which share is about 78% of the total by-air shipments to the US market.

The third variety of tuna was whole round frozen with 314 M/T.  The country also provided as well 233 M/T of pouched Albacore which was an equivalent of 2% of its total tuna delivery to the U.S market.

While Trinidad & Tobago is quite successful in its business with the USA, with a 6% share of the total U.S. tuna import market in 2007, the island nation did not  deliver any of tuna products to Europe.

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