Binh Thuan province sees jump in seafood catch

Fishing boats dock at Phu Quy Island in Binh Thuan province’s Phu Quy District. (Photo: VNA)

Binh Thuan (VNA) - The south-central province of Binh Thuan has caught and bred more than 100,000 tonnes of fish and other seafood products in the first half of the year, up 2.02 percent against the same period in 2018.

Favourable weather and the appearance of a large quantity of pelagic fish in waters offshore contributed to the increase.

Fishermen in the province, one of the country's largest fishing grounds, caught 93,000 tonnes of seafood in the period, up 2 percent against the same period last year. 

The catches include anchovies, herring, tunas, cuttlefish, blue-legged crabs, clams and others, according to the province's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The province targets catching 210,000 tonnes of fish and other seafood this year.

In the first half of the year, farmers in the province harvested nearly 6,900 tonnes of aquatic products, including shrimp and fish from 1,380ha of aquaculture farms.

The province's Agriculture and Fishery Extension Centre has developed shrimp breeding models that meet Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) standards and intensive shrimp farming. The latter harvests 14-15 tonnes of white-legged shrimp per hectare a crop.

However, most farmers are not earning much profit now because of a decline in prices, which is attributable to the expansion of white-legged shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta in recent years.

In the first half of the year, the province produced 13 billion shrimp fry, an increase of 5.5 percent year-on-year, according to the department. Binh Thuan is one of the country’s largest shrimp fry producers, and the quality of shrimp fry there tops the country.

Pham Kim Thanh, deputy director of the province’s Agriculture and Fishery Extension Centre, said the province’s fishery sector has focused on the quality of its shrimp fry.

The province has regularly organised training courses on techniques to produce high-quality shrimp fry and has implemented programmes to produce disease-free shrimp fry, he said.-VNA