Experience sharing Workshop on Thailand’s fishing vessel monitoring system (VMS) (10-07-2019)
In the morning of July 6, 2019 in Hanoi, the Directorate of Fisheries (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) organized a workshop to share experiences in monitoring fishing vessels of Thailand with the participation of Mr. Bundit Kullavanijaya - Head of fishing vessel monitoring team (Department of Fisheries of Thailand) and colleagues came from the Fisheries Monitoring Center (FMC).
The workshop was also attended by representatives of units in the Directorate of Fisheries, representatives of Fisheries Sub-Departments, representatives of fishing ports of 28 coastal provinces as well as enterprises providing fishing vessel monitoring equipment of Vietnam. Deputy Director General of Directorate of Fisheries - Mr. Nguyen Quang Hung and Mr. Tran Dinh Luan attended and chaired the Workshop.
In 2015, Thailand was warned by the European Commission (EC) for a yellow card because of violations of the IUU regulations on seafood exploitation as well as the risk of being completely banned from exporting seafood products to the European Union market if the country did not have radical solutions to combat Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) Fishing. Under this pressure, the Thai government has had implemented a series of measures to control illegal fishing practices as well as to reform Thailand's fishery sector towards environmentally responsible and compliance with international standards. After four years of efforts and serious implementation of reforms, on 9 January 2019, the EC decided to remove Thailand from the list of countries failing to tackle illegal fishing (IUU). This is the success of not only Thai fisheries but also an example for other countries in the region to study on the way of reforming and developing modern and responsible fisheries.
On October 23, 2017, the EC officially issued an IUU warning “yellow card” to Vietnam's seafood capture industry. Along with the IUU yellow card, Vietnam's fisheries sector faces the risk of being banned from exporting seafood products to the EU market if Vietnam does not solve the IUU fishing matter. In addition, the EC also proposed 9 groups of recommendations for Vietnam to be taken to remove the yellow card, of which controlling and supervising Vietnam's fishing vessels and controlling the origin of seafood products are one of the recommendations given by the EC for Vietnam's fisheries sector.
At the Workshop, delegates were presented the current status and orientation of developing a fishing vessel monitoring system of Vietnam by representative from the Fisheries Information Center (Directorate of Fisheries), and Mr. Bundit Kullavanijiya also presented on Thailand fishing vessel monitoring system and organizational structure of FMC - Fisheries Monitoring Center. After that, the delegates had a Q&A session to discuss the experience of organizing and managing fishing vessels as well as the experience of building and operating the Thai fishing vessel monitoring system. The delegates also had a visit to the fishing vessel monitoring room, which carried out the task of supervising Vietnamese fishing vessels, here, the representative of the Department of Fisheries of Thailand has frankly shared experiences and exchanged the method of building and managing the fishing vessel monitoring system of Thailand as well as giving sincere and valuable advice that helps Vietnam build and operate the most effective fishing vessel monitoring system.
At the end of the workshop, Mr. Nguyen Quang Hung - Deputy Director General of the Department of Fisheries thanked Thai delegates for the valuable experience shared at the Conference, and hoped that the two countries would continue to maintain good relationships and cooperation not only in the field of fishing vessels monitoring but also in many other field of Fishery sector. Representatives of the Department of Fisheries of Thailand promised to make every effort to help Vietnam remove the yellow card warning.
Huong Tra