Ninh Thuan develops sustainable fishery sector

Fishing vessels at My Tan fishing port, Thanh Hai commune, Ninh Hai district, Ninh Thuan province. (Photo: VNA)

Ninh Thuan (VNA) - Restructuring the fishery sector, strictly controlling the issuance of licences and quotas for seafood exploitation and preventing fishing vessels from illegal operations in foreign waters are solutions that have been implemented by Ninh Thuan province in an attempt to reorganise the sector, towards to sustainable, responsible development and international integration.

With a coastline of more than 105 km and a territorial area of more than 18,000 sq.km, Ninh Thuan is identified as one of the four key fishing grounds of Vietnam. To improve fishing efficiency, many local fishermen have invested in building new vessels and installed modern equipment such as fish finders, communication devices, fishing nets, and hydraulic winches.

The province currently has 2,291 fishing vessels with a length of six metres or more, of which, 845 are ships with a length of 15 metres or more and about 18,000 labourers working on fishing vessels (seasonal labourers account for about 25%).

According to Nguyen Khac Lam, Deputy Director of Ninh Thuan province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the province has encouraged fishermen to conduct offshore fishing and proactively implemented activities to fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

To date, all vessels operating in the province's offshore area have been granted licences to exploit seafood. The rate of fishing vessels installed vessel monitoring systems (VMS) has reached 99.7%, of which all ships of 24 metres or more have installed the VMSs. The rate of fishing vessels granted food safety certificates reached 99.6%. The province also accomplished updating fishing vessel data into the national fisheries database (VNFishbase).

With efforts to go offshore fishing and apply technology in exploitation, in the first nine months of 2023, local fishermen exploited over 115,204 tonnes of all kinds of seafood, an increase of 1.8% over the same period. So far, the province has recorded no vessels violating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing in foreign waters.

Le Huyen, Vice Chairman of the provincial People's Committee, said that the  province has determined that working to have the European Commission (EC)'s "yellow card" lifted is not only a crucial goal but also an important task to protect the environment, towards sustainable development which is in line with the province’s socio-economic growth orientations.

From now to 2025, the province will build a special mechanism on the building of new vessels to replace rotten, sunken, missing, demolished ships and strive to reduce the average annual number of ships by at least 1.5% for vessels operating in offshore areas, 4% for ships operating in open waters and 5% for ships operating in coastal waters of the total of the province’s total fishing vessels. The reduction will be carried from 2023 to 2030.

To achieve the set targets, Ninh Thuan province has diversified capital sources and effectively optimised resources to implement the plans. At the same time, the provincial People's Committee has required districts and cities to promote the dissemination of the importance and responsibilities of  localities, businesses, establishments, political, social, professional organisations in the locality and the fishing community in implementing tasks and solutions to develop the effective and sustainable fishing sector./.