Overcoming violations in fisheries exploitation to remove the IUU "yellow card"

Our province has a coastline of more than 105km, a territorial sea of more than 18,000km2, and is one of the four key fishing grounds in the country with strongly developed fishing activities. In order to soon remove the "yellow card" of the European Commission (EC) on combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU), the province has implemented many drastic and synchronous solutions to gradually restructure the fishing industry for sustainable, responsible development and international integration.

Fishing boats of fishermen in Thuan Nam district go out to sea to catch seafood. Photo: VM

According to the Department of Fisheries, the province currently has 2,291 fishing vessels with a length of 6m or more, of which 845 fishing vessels with a length of 15m or more are eligible to participate in offshore fishing and there are about 18,000 workers working on fishing vessels (seasonal workers account for about 25%). Comrade Nguyen Khac Lam, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said: In parallel with activities to encourage fishermen to go offshore, the province is determined to implement IUU activities. Up to now, 100% of the province's offshore vessels have been granted licenses to exploit seafood; the rate of fishing vessels installed with voyage monitoring equipment has reached 99.7% (of which 100% of fishing vessels 24m or more have installed voyage monitoring equipment); the rate of fishing vessels granted food safety certificates has reached 99.6%; Complete 100% of updating fishing vessel data into the national fisheries database (VNFishbase).

With efforts to go offshore and apply technology in exploitation, in the first 9 months of 2023, fishermen in the province exploited over 115,204 tons of various types of seafood, an increase of 1.8% over the same period. Through monitoring and evaluation, the inspection and control of fishing vessels according to EC recommendations has made much progress, most offshore fishing vessels strictly comply with declaration and submission of fishing logbooks. Currently, the whole province has no fishing vessels violating foreign waters. Regarding the certification of origin of aquatic raw materials, the province has not had any aquatic product shipments requiring certification.

Seafood exploitation has achieved many positive results in recent times, contributing to increasing fishermen's income and developing the province's socio -economy. However, there are still some fishermen who are not fully aware of the harmful effects of IUU fishing, leading to poor compliance with regulations on seafood exploitation. Meanwhile, facilities and equipment for inspection and supervision are still limited; the system for monitoring and controlling seafood exploitation activities is not yet synchronized, leading to difficulties in detecting and handling violations.

To overcome the above limitations, contributing to supporting fishermen in developing sustainable fisheries, aiming to remove the EC's "yellow card"; The Provincial People's Committee has issued a plan for effective and sustainable fisheries development for the period 2022-2025, with a vision to 2030 in the area. Accordingly, by 2025, the province strives to reduce the average number of vessels annually by at least 1.5% for vessels operating in offshore areas, 4% for vessels operating in offshore areas and 5% for vessels operating in coastal waters out of the total number of existing fishing vessels in the province. Granting approval for new ship construction in the direction of prioritizing environmentally friendly occupations, vessels with high mechanization in the stages of exploitation and product preservation, using metal hulls and new materials; not granting approval for new construction or conversion for trawling vessels. At the same time, convert coastal and offshore occupations to fisheries exploitation and aquaculture services for localities with potential. For the group of offshore fishing vessels currently operating, the development of tuna trawling and gillnetting will be limited, allowing ship owners to operate in occupations that are less harmful to the environment, ecosystems and aquatic resources so that ship owners have enough time and funds to access new conversion occupations.

Purchasing seafood at Dong Hai fishing port (Phan Rang - Thap Cham City).

To achieve the above objectives, the province has diversified its capital mobilization sources and effectively used resources to implement the plan with five groups of implementation solutions. At the same time, the Provincial People's Committee requested districts and cities to step up propaganda and dissemination to localities, businesses and fishing communities to see the importance and responsibility in participating in implementing tasks and solutions to develop effective and sustainable fisheries exploitation. On the other hand, it is necessary to improve the effectiveness of state management; strengthen inspection and supervision of fisheries exploitation activities, promptly detect and strictly handle violations; perfect the legal system on fisheries, meeting the requirements of management and protection of aquatic resources.

Mr. Tuan

Source