Against IUU fishing needs to be more drastic

On November 15, Mr. Nguyen Minh Canh, Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Ben Tre province, chaired a meeting to evaluate the results of tasks against IUU fishing (illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing).

According to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Ben Tre province, since the beginning of the year, relevant units, mainly the Sub-Department of Fisheries and the fishing port management board, have actively focused on implementing the directives of the People's Committee on combating IUU fishing has achieved some pretty good results.

The total number of fishing vessels in the province is over 3,800, over 2,000 ones with a length of 15 meters or more. There are 1,880 over 2,630 fishing vessels that are registered. The percentage of vessels that install monitoring equipment in the province is 100%.

From the beginning of the year, nearly 3,000 vessels have lost monitoring signals, of which 190 cases have been reported for ten days or more. Currently, there are three vessels in operation that have lost monitoring signals for more than ten days. The Fisheries Sub-Department is coordinating with relevant units to handle these violations.

The authorities of Ben Tre province have inspected over 1,600 times fishing vessels arriving at the port to load fishery and over 2,700 ones leaving the dock, monitored over 41,500 tonnes of fishery passing through the port, and collected over 1,700 journey diaries.

Regarding handling violations related to IUU fishing, the Fisheries Sub-Department of Ben Tre province issued 7 sanctioning decisions with VND 172 million. The violations contain building new and converting fishing boats without technical design documents, not logging in exploitation, purchasing, transshipment, not declaring ships docked, using electric stimulation tools for fishing.

For 21 sanctioning decisions vessels losing signal, 3 owners paid for fines with VND 68.32 million. In addition, 7 fishing vessels and 51 fishermen have been illegally fishing in foreign waters since the beginning of the year.

Mr. Nguyen Minh Canh, Vice Chairman of Ben Tre Provincial People's Committee, asked the provincial authorities to continue promoting the positive results achieved and be more drastic in the fight against IUU fishing.

In addition, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development needs to grasp the number of ships operating and decommissioning in the province and the number of provincial ships operating in Ca Mau and other provinces. In December 2021, the province will organize a working delegation in Ca Mau on this issue.