An advantage of nearly 14,000 hectares of water surface in the lagoon and the bay is the premise for Phu Yen province to develop Phu Yen aquaculture. Over the past 3 years (2015-2017) in restructuring, efficiency of internal production structure has shifted with aquaculture sector from 36% to 46.5% (2017), and fishing dropped to 53.5%. Mr. Nguyen Tri Phuong, Deputy Director of Phu Yen Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that over the past 3 years (2015-2017), the production value of the fishery sector reached an average increase of 4.5% a year. Of that, the value of 2017 increased by 14.2% compared to 2014.
Currently, the annual area of aquaculture in Phu Yen is more than 2,600 hectares, with the main high-value species being white shrimp, black tiger shrimp, lobster, grouper, snapper and cobia. The product value per hectare of aquaculture surface reached an average of 842 million VND/ha, an increase of 35.9% over 2014. Aquaculture production in 2017 reached 11,059 tons, up 8% compared to 2016.
The increase in fishery output is due to the fact that people move the area of black tiger shrimp to white shrimp farming and high tide culture with the yield per crop usually from 4 to 6 tons/ha, 2 times more than black tiger shrimp and people can raise 2 crops of white shrimp in a year. Besides, farmers also actively diversify their species such as grouper, snapper, scallop, green mussel ..., increasing the production and improving the breeding environment. In addition, one of the strongest aquaculture in Phu Yen is lobster farming with cages with commercial lobster yield of 500-750 tons per year.
Phu Yen has also successfully built several models of aquaculture in the direction of biosafety, diversification and environmental friendliness. Environmental monitoring and disease control activities in the farming areas are always focused on nearly 60% of farming areas in the direction of VietGAP, biosafety, disease safety; Fingerlings under quarantine is used in 50% of the breeding area. Some of the new technologies applied to white shrimp farming in sand bring very high yield.
Typically, in Hoa Tam commune (Dong Hoa district), there is one household reaching about 30 tons/ha of white shrimp and about 1 billion VND/ha of profit. Dac Loc Co., Ltd. researches the process of nursing white leg shrimp in the net house with new technology and annually produces from 2.5 billion to 3 billion of shrimp fingerlings, opening the direction of stability, sustainability for shrimp farming in Phu Yen today. This process is awarded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam with Golden Rice Award and registered in the “Vietnam Gold Innovation Book of 2017”.
Currently, Dac Loc Seafood Company Limited is producing and trading in closed seafood value chain from input to output, applying Global Gap quality management system to ensure bio-safety and traceability.
In order to develop aquaculture in the direction of biosafety and food safety, with a fund from the Coastal Resources for Sustainable Development Project (CRSD), Phu Yen Province has upgraded the infrastructure supporting the farming areas in An Cu, An Hai (Tuy An district), Xuan Loc commune (Song Cau town) and Hoa Hiep Nam commune (Dong Hoa district); Upgrading infrastructure for fingerling production in Hoa Hiep Trung commune (Dong Hoa district) and Xuan Hoa commune (Song Cau town).
Mr. Nguyen Tri Phuong, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development added, Phu Yen People's Committee recently issued regulations on management of cages and rafts in aquaculture in the sea. At present, the province is investing in the infrastructure of Long Thanh aquaculture area (Song Cau town), building the aquaculture center for seawater and building a detailed plan on water surface for aquaculture in Xuan Dai bay (Song Cau town); implementing the pilot model of automatic monitoring of water quality in the farming area and establishing aquaculture community management teams.
Nhu Nguyet