Average cost of importing wild fish? - (With easy to read chart!)

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Modest_Man

Modest_Man

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Jul 5, 2006
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So I got to thinking about what it actually costs to import wild fish. The larger the fish the less you can cram into a box, and the more it costs for fuel (with the weight) to import.

What I did was I visited Jeff Rapp's website (http://www.tangledupincichlids.com/stock.html), who I trust the most to actually sell wild fish as wild. I took the length of his wild fish and their price and imported them into Microsoft Excel. (I took an average length as Jeff's values tend to vary by an inch.) I ended up with 31 data points, which I plotted on a graph and then fit several formulas to to see which fit the data the best. Just by looking at the data you can tell it is not a linear relationship. This means it does not cost the same amount per inch to ship a 2" fish as it does a 20" fish. The best (aka most accurate) formula for the 31 data points was a power formula. The R-squared value was .7289, meaning that the data I had accounted for 72.89% of the variance in the line. This is pretty good.

The formula worked out to being y=4.2882x^1.619. In order to calculate how much an average wild fish would cost you simply replace x with the length in inches of the fish. So a 22" fish would cost right around $635.06.

Here's the data I used and the graph produced. Feel free to double check my numbers.
Untitled_zps78a41641.jpg


I will state that I don't have very many data points for larger fish. If anyone has any other suppliers wild fish prices feel free to let me know and I'll include them in the formula. The more points I can get the more accurate it will be.

Feel free to lather me with hate for bringing up that several importers charge way less than what they should for "wild" fish. I haven't stirred things up much here lately. Just think about it logically from a cost benefit analysis.
 
Interesting stuff. Can I speculate here since I'm not in the trade?

When you say the "cost to import" are you referring to the seller's product/selling cost or the buyer's price (commonly called cost)?

The cost to the buyer (in a non competitive market) is probably not wholly driven by the cost to the seller, but the strike price between sellers and buyers, which is a function of supply / demand (barring tariffs and export / import laws.). In truly competitive markets, price has a fairly strong relationship to sellers' cost. In weak or near monopoly markets, this relationship is much weaker. In that case, larger fish may be in an artificially limited supply with strike prices artificially set.

On the other hand, some of the cost to the seller does have some relationship to fish size (shipping cost, possible product loss etc.), but otherwise is not likely strongly driven by the size of the fish (unless the cost to catch or find fish is directly related to size. Interesting point, for which I have no information.)

Interesting stuff.
 
I used the buyer's cost. I don't have access to any sellers actual costs, so I have to go by stock lists with prices for the consumer. I am not a business major, I use Excel for fisheries research so I'll be the first to say that I make some assumptions in my data. If I had other data to work with I would! (AKA if someone can get me more data I'll add it in.)

What it boils down to for me is that if there are importers/wholesalers who are selling "wild" fish (especially large fish) at a relatively cheap price it's probably too good to be true.
 
Is it pure coincidence that the fish you are using as an example is 22" and it's lineage is only in question by "you"? Is it also a coincidence that you are attacking the fish and vendor in question because you dislike said vendor? Seems that you have a little too much time on your hands and could use your knowledge of math and graphs somewhere that it is needed much more. Just my 2 cents....carry on :)
 
This equation only deals with a single parameter? Length of a single fish to ship a single fish? this only applies (if the math is correct) to fish large enough to require a single box and we can use the example of lets say a 22" dovii ;) What's not taken into account is the profitability and ease of transport of the smaller fish imported when many fish can be packed and shipped easily into single boxes. Packing many into a box must drastically reduce transit costs for those smaller fish and bring the average total down. Whats not taken into account is the total cost of the shipment effecting the cost of the individual fish. The profit made up by the smaller fish brought back inexpensively must allow sellers to sell the monsters a lot cheaper than usual. I think the situation here is if we were to fly to Nicaragua to catch a single 22" Dovii and bring it back to sell it with a need to make a profit. I believe this is a reason importers don't just go for 1 monster fish on a trip. Then the prices would have to be astronomical to turn a proper profit.

Just my .02 on the matter. Hope it makes sense lol
 
Lmao ! I will chime in long enough to say this ! U have not the first clue what u are talking about when it comes to bringing in fish as I guess u do not own a farm u do not sell fish u do not importfish u do not export fish ! My fish speak for thethemselves if u don't like them don't buy them..... but I sell world wide every week and have very happy customers all around the worldmy fish have won the aca time and time again . So when u get on my level and what u are talking about maybe I'll waste more of my time on you ! But carry on !! Haters will hate !
 
ok, as someone who has imported for years I have a little experience here, the variable as tremendous depending on where the fish come from, ie. Asian, most expensive, Colombia, not to bad (is close to us), Uruguay, most expensive in this hemisphere, different parts of Brazil charge different prices, also depends on how many fish that certain supplier put into a box, I got a 25" plus Adonis Pleco a few years ago, I did not sell it for near the top end of your scale. I think I sold him for $175 plus shipping, and made money.
 
mrmann said:
Is it pure coincidence that the fish you are using as an example is 22" and it's lineage is only in question by "you"? Is it also a coincidence that you are attacking the fish and vendor in question because you dislike said vendor? Seems that you have a little too much time on your hands and could use your knowledge of math and graphs somewhere that it is needed much more. Just my 2 cents....carry on :)
Click to expand...

I'm not working in the field the next week, just had a daughter. So I'm home doing data entry. So was my price of $635.06 close to what you paid? :) Really not trying to pick on you, but who else can comment on the accuracy of the formula?

fishman09 said:
This equation only deals with a single parameter? Length of a single fish to ship a single fish? this only applies (if the math is correct) to fish large enough to require a single box and we can use the example of lets say a 22" dovii ;) What's not taken into account is the profitability and ease of transport of the smaller fish imported when many fish can be packed and shipped easily into single boxes. Packing many into a box must drastically reduce transit costs for those smaller fish and bring the average total down. Whats not taken into account is the total cost of the shipment effecting the cost of the individual fish. The profit made up by the smaller fish brought back inexpensively must allow sellers to sell the monsters a lot cheaper than usual. I think the situation here is if we were to fly to Nicaragua to catch a single 22" Dovii and bring it back to sell it with a need to make a profit. I believe this is a reason importers don't just go for 1 monster fish on a trip. Then the prices would have to be astronomical to turn a proper profit.

Just my .02 on the matter. Hope it makes sense lol
Click to expand...

I think you misread the data. I plotted cost of a fish vs. it's length from Rapps. If you look at the third column, it show how much those fish cost per inch. The smaller fish are MUCH MUCH cheaper per inch to purchase than the larger fish. Which completely supports most of what you just said.

This - "The profit made up by the smaller fish brought back inexpensively must allow sellers to sell the monsters a lot cheaper than usual." I disagree with. The risk of bringing in a large fish is much more than smaller fish. They're much more likely to die during shipment, and much more expensive. Are importers taking a loss on large adult fish? I don't know, but from a business standpoint it doesn't make sense to me. (Which is probably a huge reason why we don't see large wild fish for sale). For large adult cichlids the price does need to be astronomical in order to turn a profit, which is what makes me question LARGE, CHEAP, WILD fish. All three can't be true.
 
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