Controlling fishing activities at fishing ports is the key content to implement the European Commission's (EC) recommendations on combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This is the center to promote propaganda in many forms (loudspeakers, radios, leaflets, billboards, etc.) for many subjects, ensuring that all fishermen, establishments, and businesses providing fishing services in the port clearly understand the regulations on managing fishing activities at fishing ports, combating IUU fishing, and the EC's "Yellow Card" to raise awareness, responsibility, and sense of law compliance, while contributing to propagating to many related subjects to know and implement. With the role and significance of fishing ports in combating IUU fishing, in recent times, the province has directed relevant sectors, units, and localities to pay attention to managing and improving the efficiency of fishing port operations; Focus on inspecting and supervising seafood loading and unloading activities and checking and controlling fishing vessels entering and leaving ports smoothly and meeting standards.
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| Provincial authorities coordinated with Nam Dinh Fishing Port Management Board to distribute propaganda documents and instruct fishermen to strictly follow regulations when exploiting aquatic products at sea. |
Currently, in the province, there are 2 fishing ports announced to open and put into operation; of which Ninh Co fishing port is a type I port announced to open by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and Thanh Vui fishing port is a type III port. Quan Vinh fishing port (Nghia Hung) is under construction. In order to implement the work of combating IUU fishing, overcoming recommendations to remove the EC's yellow card, implementing the direction of the Provincial People's Committee, the Provincial Steering Committee 67-IUU, the Fishing Port Management Board has seriously organized and resolutely implemented the directives of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the province on combating IUU fishing. Coordinate with the Department of Fisheries, the Department of Inspection, the Department of Agricultural, Forestry and Fishery Product Quality Management, the Representative Office of Fisheries Inspection, Control and Control to develop a process for inspecting and controlling fishing vessels entering and leaving the port; At the same time, work regulations were issued and tasks were assigned to be on duty 24/7 to monitor, synthesize information, and report data according to regulations. Comrade Nguyen Thanh Chung, Director of Nam Dinh Fishing Port Management Board, said: “From the beginning of 2023 to now, the Port Management Board has inspected nearly 1,000 ships arriving at the port, 1,001 ships leaving the port, and collected 947 fishing logbooks; Thanh Vui Fishing Port inspected 63 ships arriving at the port, 63 ships leaving the port, and collected 63 fishing logbooks. The total amount of aquatic products monitored for unloading through the two fishing ports reached nearly 1,144 tons. The management of fishing vessels, registration, inspection, and issuance of fishing licenses has been well implemented”.
Nam Dinh Fishing Port Management Board has regularly carried out the task of disseminating and popularizing the Fisheries Law, guiding documents, especially regulations on IUU fishing to fishermen. Specifically, it has coordinated with functional forces to distribute 800 leaflets on "Legal and responsible fishing for a sustainable fishery"; 500 handbooks on fishing vessel management, exploitation and protection of aquatic resources; 220 seafaring handbooks for fishermen; more than 3,000 leaflets on combating IUU fishing; instructing ship owners and captains to check the voyage monitoring device (VMS) before leaving the port, regularly monitor the device, pay subscription fees to ensure the device operates 24/24 hours from the time of leaving the port to the time of docking and regulations that ship owners and fishermen need to remember before going to sea for production or docking. At the same time, advise the Department of Fisheries and the functional forces of the province to resolutely not issue documents and procedures for fishing vessels that do not ensure safety, are not equipped with adequate equipment according to regulations such as: no signal to connect to VMS equipment, no painting of the fishing vessel cabin, fishing not in accordance with the licensed profession, vessel records lack of approved technical design. Strengthen the forces to coordinate patrols and control at sea to handle fishing vessels that violate the use of electric shock, prohibited fishing gear, fishing in the wrong area... Promote the effectiveness of the activities of interdisciplinary teams to inspect and control fishing activities at fishing ports.
With the support of the province, departments, agencies, and functional branches, especially the specialized forces at fishing ports, up to now, the whole province has registered all 1,225 fishing vessels; marked 1,215/1,225 fishing vessels, reaching 99.2%. Certificates of qualified food safety facilities have been issued to 492/515 fishing vessels. Based on the quota of offshore fishing licenses announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the quota of offshore and coastal fishing licenses announced by the Provincial People's Committee, the Department of Fisheries has issued fishing licenses to 1,161/1,225 vessels, reaching 94.78% of the total number of fishing vessels subject to licensing; updated information data of 1,225/1,225 fishing vessels with the longest length of 6m or more on the Vnfishbase software. The number of fishing vessels from 15m and above that have installed VMS equipment is 507/515 fishing vessels, reaching a rate of 97.5%. The remaining fishing vessels that have not installed VMS equipment are inactive vessels lying on shore, newly registered vessels or vessels in contact to purchase and install VMS equipment; a specific list of fishing vessel anchorage locations has been made and assigned to the locality for management of this group of vessels.
Implementing the Regulation on coordination in management, exploitation and processing of data on the fishing vessel monitoring system between the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Department of Information and Communications, the Provincial Border Guard Command and the People's Committees of districts with fishing vessels and Decision No. 33/QD-CCTS dated September 20, 2021 on the Data Processing Procedure on the Fishing Vessel Monitoring System, every month the Fishing Port Management Board prepares a schedule for 24/24 fishing vessel monitoring system duty, divided into 4 shifts/day, equipped with 4 large screens and 4 computers for duty on the fishing vessel monitoring system. Through monitoring and supervision, 6 notices of vessels losing signal for 10 days or more and 1 notice of vessels losing signal for over 1 year have been detected, processed and issued to coordinating units for proper handling; The number of ships that lost signal for more than 10 days was 266, of which 92 ships/109 ships lost connection at sea for more than 10 days. The results of the inspection showed that the main reasons were that fishermen had not paid the fee; the ships were on shore for a long time, so the VMS device was turned off; the ships were sold to other localities. No fishing boats of Nam Dinh fishermen violated foreign waters or were arrested by foreign countries.
The active and drastic participation of departments, branches and localities, especially the Fishing Port Management Board, in implementing relevant legal regulations on controlling seafood exploitation activities are the guarantees for the completion of overcoming the EC's recommendations on combating IUU fishing; together with the whole country, removing the "Yellow Card" for Vietnamese seafood entering the European market, towards safe and sustainable development for the seafood industry./.
Article and photos: Van Dai
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