Khanh Hoa (VNA) – A delegationof agriculture, defence, and public security officials visited Khanh Hoa onSeptember 30 - October 1 to inspect the south central province’s effortsagainst illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

The trip was made ahead of a visit toVietnam by a European Commission (EC) delegation from October 17 to 28 toexamine the country’s moves to carry out recommendations about IUU fishingprevention. This is considered a great opportunity for Vietnam to persuade theEC to remove the “yellow-card” warning against IUU fishing.

Nguyen Trong Chanh, head of Khanh Hoa’sfisheries division, said the entire local political system has taken drasticactions to eradicate IUU fishing and obtained encouraging results.

The province has updated information about all the 3,199 fishing vessels on thenational fisheries database (Vnfishbase) and granted fishing licenses to 3,184vessels (equivalent to 99.5%). All vessels are examined before and after each fishingtrip, according to the provincial Department of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment.

In the first nine months of 2022, localauthorities examined 2,724 tonnes of seafood and certified 2,082 tonnes. The fisheries division also organised 336 patrols and examinations,fining 54 violating cases nearly 600 million VND (25,100 USD).

Vu Duyen Hai, Deputy Director of theCapture Fisheries Department at the MARD’s Directorate of Fisheries, spokehighly of Khanh Hoa’s efforts in combating IUU fishing but also asked theprovince to address several shortcomings, including those related to theexamination of food safety, monitoring system, fish catch, export, and import.

In particular, it is necessary to increase personnel for fishery ports andensure control over the number of vessels, he noted.

Deputy General Director of theDirectorate of Fisheries Nguyen Quang Hung said removing the “yellow-card”warning and steering clear of a “red card” issued by the EC is an urgent taskof the entire political system.

He added as Khanh Hoa has a relatively large fishing industry and manybusinesses exporting fishery products to Europe, its localities should step upcommunications to encourage fishermen to join hands in fighting IUU fishingwhile keeping a close watch on the boats that haven’t installed the vessel monitoringsystem and asking vehicles to turn on the equipment during their fishing trips.

Khanh Hoa still has much to be done before the EC delegation comes, Hung said,requesting it to devise a detailed plan, complete papers, and review personnelat fishery ports./.