In Nghe An, although fishermen have made great efforts to maintain their profession and go out to sea. However, due to ineffective fishing and high input costs, they often fall into losses. Each time they send their fishing boats out to sea, it is a difficult choice because they are betting on luck, winning or losing...
Nghe An is one of the provinces favored by nature with a coastline of 82 km and a developed river system. Along the coast, there are 6 estuaries (Lach Con, Lach Van, Lach Thoi, Lach Quen, Cua Lo, Cua Hoi). The sea area is 4,230 square nautical miles; the coast has over 3,000 hectares of brackish water surface, capable of raising shrimp, crabs, mollusks, etc. This is a favorable condition for coastal households to do business including tourism development, salt production, seafood exploitation along with other production and business activities such as shipbuilding, ice making, seafood processing. However, when the marine economy has not developed commensurate with its potential, human activities have caused pollution and serious damage to aquatic resources.
Regarding the key fishing communes of Quynh Luu district and Hoang Mai town at this time, it is not difficult to see the anxious atmosphere in the fishing villages. The anxiety is because, except for a few effective fishing boats that have paid off most of the loans for building new boats, the majority of the boats are built with loans, mainly from banks.
Indeed, if before, a 600 CV boat only cost 100 million VND for fuel per trip, now it has increased to 150 million. Mr. An and some other households that own boats, so they are called professionals, borrowed capital and built their own boats so they could pay off the debt, although they were not under too much pressure. However, due to the lack of fishing, they have only had one trip since Tet and only enough for fuel. The difficulty for fishermen is that fishing is inefficient, so fuel dealers are reluctant to give them money in advance for fuel, and if they do, they can only pay for a few trips with 5,000 liters of fuel.
Fisherman Bui Xuan Vinh, a hired laborer in Phu Thanh hamlet, Quynh Long commune, added: In previous years, in the first 4 months of this year, the ship went on dozens of fishing trips, but this year, due to the increase in oil prices and the continuous rough seas, it has only been able to go on 2 trips, of which 1 trip lost oil, the last trip covered all expenses and earned more than 1 million VND for the family. With the increase in fuel prices, if you can go out to sea to catch fish, you are not afraid because the cost is high, and the high sales of products are enough to compensate. In this case, the ship was built according to Decree 67, when the price of fuel increases and fishing is ineffective, the difficulties are doubled or tripled.
According to statistics from fishing associations in Quynh Luu and Hoang Mai town, since the end of last year, many boats have been losing more and more money, causing the number of boats in the area to decrease very quickly. Some fishermen, although loving their job, are fishing inefficiently and losing more and more money, so they have had to "bite the bullet" and sell their fishing boats at cheap prices to "cut their losses".
According to Mr. Le Ba Ky - Chairman of the Farmers' Association of Quynh Lap commune, in the past, fishermen in the area mainly sold old and dilapidated ships, but recently, good and normally operating ships were also sold. In Quynh Long, Son Hai (Quynh Luu) or Quynh Lap (Hoang Mai town), there are 67 ships that were previously built for 12-14 billion VND or fishing boats built by fishermen worth 3-5 billion VND but now have been bank-equivalent to only 800 million to 1 billion VND, there are fishing boats that fishermen still accept to sell for 500 to 700 million VND. Specifically, from the beginning of 2022 until now, Son Hai commune has had more than 10 4-sao ships for squid fishing, Quynh Long commune has nearly 50 ships for seining, Quynh Lap commune has 8 fishing boats with a capacity of over 90 CV in the commune that have to be sold out of the area.
The offshore fishing profession in Quynh Long and Tien Thuy is the same, and the offshore fishing profession in 4 sao is similar. While preparing logistics for a new trip, Mr. Hong, hamlet 4, Son Hai commune, showed a receipt of 40 million VND for fuel and said: The family boat fishes in the offshore area, from 50 nautical miles and out. In recent years, due to the decrease in aquatic resources and the fishing boats are single, we have to work hard and be lucky to have enough money for fuel. Each trip of a few days costs about 40 million VND for fuel, so we have to calculate, we can't just go offshore.
Mr. Hoang Son - Vice Chairman of Son Hai Commune People's Committee confirmed: the commune has a fleet of nearly 100 boats specializing in 2 sao and 4 sao for squid fishing and needlefish fishing for export, which used to be a bright spot in the province's fishing industry and contributed to promoting the development of maritime logistics services. However, the commune's fishing industry is currently in an extremely difficult time, with high fuel costs and no fishing; in the past 3 years, the average income of each fishing worker is only a few million VND/month, so more than half of the total 100 boats have been docked since the beginning of the year and nearly 500 workers out of a total of 1,200 fishing workers have studied for certificates to go to sea transport and export labor.
Mr. Tran Nhu Long - Deputy Head of Nghe An Fisheries Sub-Department said: From 2020 up to now, whether it is offshore fishing in Quynh Long, Tien Thuy, Quynh Nghia (Quynh Luu) or squid fishing, needlefish fishing in Son Hai (Quynh Luu), trawl fishing in Quynh Phuong, Quynh Lap (Hoang Mai Town); trawling in Dien Chau, all have encountered difficulties. Nearly 5 months have passed and the traditional Southern fishing season has been 1 month, but the rate of boats going out to sea is very low, the number of boats staying on shore accounts for nearly 40%. Although the statistics of fishing output still increase, due to high investment costs and high fuel costs, the income of fishermen has decreased.
The report of the Directorate of Fisheries at the workshop on improving the efficiency of fisheries at the end of April showed that in 2020, the output and productivity of exploitation nationwide tended to increase with an average of about 41 tons/ship/year. However, the average output per unit of capacity has decreased significantly. Specifically, if in 1985, the average productivity reached 1.1 tons/CV/year, now it is only 0.26 tons/CV/year; labor costs are only a few million VND/person/month.
It can be said that the efficiency of seafood exploitation in Nghe An in particular and in coastal provinces in our country in general is decreasing because the fleet develops too quickly, the exploitation force is too strong compared to the ability to reproduce and regenerate aquatic resources at sea. In parallel with the development of offshore fishing fleet, the nearshore fishing fleet is not decreasing but is looking for ways to invest and improve to fish with more strength.
Being present at Lach Van fishing port (Dien Chau) shows that every day there are dozens of pairs of boats returning to the port, carrying tons of seafood, which are trash fish, with a destructive nature. A fisherman from Dien Ngoc commune who was arrested and fined for his job of trawling confided: working nearshore, the seafood does not have high value, mainly imported for traders to buy for animal feed processing facilities. Each trip, if lucky, you can earn 3-5 million VND, just enough for wages, but if unlucky, you will be arrested, the family has a boat that cannot go to sea, but the boat is small, the engine is weak, so it cannot go out to the open sea.
Besides the reason that the capacity of the small fleet makes fishermen "difficulties limit their intelligence", there are still many fishermen who, regardless, use electric shocks and even explosives to fish. Mr. Tran Van Nguyen - Chairman of the People's Committee of Quynh Long commune admitted: Compared to before, although the phenomenon of illegal fishing by destructive methods has decreased, there are still many fishing boats and fishermen who store and use it. The phenomenon of fish dying from burst bellies drifting ashore in Quynh Luu recently is most likely due to being hit by mines.
Participating in coastal exploitation inspection teams in the past 2 years, the rate of fishing boats storing illegal fishing tools is not small. As soon as the authorities strictly inspect, fishermen cut off the illegal fishing tools or throw away the fuse to disperse.
According to the assessment survey of the Institute of Marine Research, the Directorate of Fisheries announced in July 2021, the number of seafood species and seafood reserves in the Gulf of Tonkin has decreased sharply in the past 5 years. Previously, many species appeared regularly but now they no longer exist. Mr. Bui Van Nam, a fisherman in Quynh Long commune, gave an example: Previously, fishing in the Gulf of Tonkin had large mackerel and tuna, but now it is almost very rare and rare.
On the other hand, due to the decreasing fishery resources and the Tonkin Gulf Fisheries Agreement not being re-signed and China regularly banning the sea from April to June every year, including inspecting and controlling the common fishing area, offshore fishing vessels of the people who want to fish often have to go down to the southern sea areas such as Ha Tinh and Quang Binh to find fish.
Mr. Vu Ngoc Chat - Chairman of Quynh Long Fisheries Association recalled: Previously, when we first started converting from squid fishing to purse seine fishing, each trip lasted from 5-7 days and yielded several dozen tons of fish and earned 1-2 billion VND/boat, but now due to depleted aquatic resources and a dense fishing fleet, it is very rare for a boat to have dozens of tons of fish. In the Gulf of Tonkin alone, there are thousands of offshore fishing boats from Nghe An, Nam Dinh, Thanh Hoa, Hai Phong provinces, and in the coastal waters of Nghe An, there are still up to 2,000 boats under 15 m fishing, so the decline in aquatic resources is inevitable.
It is known that, along with consulting the Prime Minister to approve the Fisheries Development Plan to 2030 and vision to 2050 in the direction of restructuring, increasing the proportion of seafood from mainly exploitation to coastal aquaculture, to reduce fishing intensity... The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Directorate of Fisheries have limited the quota of new licenses for exploitation activities for provinces and are studying policies to support fishermen to ban the sea during the breeding season to regenerate aquatic resources.
(To be continued)