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Vietnamese fishing in troubled
waters
By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam
HO CHI MINH CITY - "Never in my life have
I seen these prices for anchovies!" said Sau Tinh,
owner of Thanh Quoc - a factory producing
fermented fish sauce at Phu Quoc Island in
Vietnam's Kien Giang province.
Anchovies
are the basic ingredients needed to churn out the
famous Phu Quoc fish sauce now available in many
supermarkets in Europe and the US that cater to
local Vietnamese communities. This year, Sau Tinh
has little choice but to pay 4,000 dong (25 US
cents) for a kilo of anchovies, double of what she
forked out last year, if she wants to keep her
production of Phu Quoc fish sauce at current
levels for exports. And the factory owner said she
considers herself lucky to be able to find enough
anchovy stock for the year.
Phu Quoc is
Vietnam's largest island, situated in the gulf of
Thailand just off the southern coast of Vietnam,
and is famed for making the best fish sauce - or
nuoc mam, as it known in Vietnamese - in
the world. Although fermented fish sauce can be
found elsewhere in Southeast Asia - in Thailand it
is known as nam pla - Phu Quoc producers
use only long-jawed anchovies, eschewing their
competitors' mix of a variety of types of fish. In
recognition of its quality and unique
manufacturing process, the island's nuoc
mam was given a certified label in June 2001
by the Vietnamese government, guaranteeing its
origin.
Fame of the Phu Quoc fermented
fish sauce has prompted hordes of businesses to
enter the market, some even from other provinces -
all of them seeking the long-jawed anchovies.
Because of over-fishing to meet the demands of the
new nuoc mam factories, local stocks of Phu
Quoc's anchovies have fallen drastically.
According to Phan Ngoc Vu, vice director of the
Kien Giang's Department of Marine Resources, in
the past two years unsustainable and illegal
exploitation has reduced the population of
anchovies by half.
But anchovies are not
the only marine resources to suffer from
over-exploitation. According to Vietnam's Deputy
Minister of Fisheries Nguyen Viet Thang, some 37
species of fish, five species of shrimp, 27
species of mollusks and some other sea creatures
like marine turtles, dugong and dolphins are on
the verge of extinction. Equally threatened by
human intervention are Vietnam's marine
ecosystems.
Throughout the country,
unsustainable fishing techniques are
over-exploiting marine resources. Cyanide and
dynamite are both used widely to catch fish.
Cyanide has extremely detrimental effects on all
living organisms in the surrounding environment
and dynamite does irreparable damage to coral reef
systems.
While information on Vietnam's
marine biodiversity is incomplete, 11,000 species
have so far been recorded in Vietnam's marine and
coastal waters. There are more than 2,000 fish
species and approximately 130 of these have
economic value. Coral reef exists along the length
of the coastline from around the rocky islands
Halong Bay, Paracel Island (Hoang Sa) and Spratly
Islands (Truong Sa) in the north, rocky
promontories of the central coastline, and around
Con Dao Island and Phu Quoc Islands in the south.
Some 350 species of hard coral have been recorded
in Vietnamese waters so far.
Another
factor adding to the problem of loss of marine
biodiversity is the increase in the number of
fishermen. From 1990 to 2004, the number of
fishermen in the country has almost doubled,
rising from 270,600 to 550,000 in 2004. Due to
their lack of capital to buy deep-sea equipment,
most of these fishermen stay close to shore and
use small mesh fishnets - both of which deplete
marine resources fast.
Also, over the past
two decades, the country's fleet of fishing
vessels has increased dramatically both in number
and fishing capacity. At a recent conference
organized by the Fisheries Ministry, co-sponsored
by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
and Denmark's Fisheries Sector Program Support, it
was revealed that Vietnam's domestic fishing fleet
capacity has increased by 6.5 times and is now
able to bring in about 2 million tons of seafood a
year.
But these catches, unfortunately,
are from coastal waters less than 50 meters in
depth - where fishermen often destroy many kinds
of marine life, including breeding stocks. Recent
oil spills from vessels have also caused great
concern as they seriously pollute the sea and
destroy marine flora and fauna. To divert
fishermen from coastal areas, the government in
1996 launched a national deep-sea fisheries
development program to ensure a supply of fish to
the country's processing plants while reducing
commercial fishing in coastal waters.
In
2002, Hanoi also approved plans to set up marine
protected areas (MPA). Some 16 sites have been
identified as worthy of protection as marine
reserves. Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and
Environment Pham Khoi Nguyen said the fisheries
industry would reduce the number of small fishing
vessels and develop offshore fishing. But to date,
all these efforts have made little impact in
protecting Vietnam's marine biodiversity.
Of the 16 sites identified as possible
MPAs, only the Hon Mun Islands site, off the coast
of the central province of Khanh Hoa, has received
funding from the World Bank. The much-acclaimed
deep-sea fishing program has harvested only
marginal results after nine years of
implementation. The local industry is still held
back by an inadequate supply of experienced and
skilled fishermen, a lack of deep-sea fishing
boats, and ineffective post-catch processing
equipment and technology.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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